Preverbs: an introduction

The notion ‘preverb’ is a traditional descriptive notion in Indo-European linguistics. It refers to morphemes that appear in front of a verb, and which form a close semantic unit with that verb. In many cases, the morpheme that functions as a preverb can also function without a preverbal context, often as an adverb or an adposition. Most linguists use the notion ‘preverb’ as a cover term for preverbal words and preverbal prefixes. The preverb may be separated from the verb whilst retaining its close cohesion with the verb, which is called ‘tmesis’. It may also develop into a bound morpheme, that is, a prefix inseparable from the verb, with concomitant reduction of phonological form in some cases. If the preverb has become a real prefix, we may use the more specific notion of ‘complex verb’, whereas we take the notion ‘complex predicate’ to refer generally to multi-morphemic expressions with verbal valency. That is, we make a terminological distinction between complex predicates and complex verbs. The latter are multi-morphemic, but behave as single grammatical words

Integrated parentheticals in quotations and free indirect discourse

Free Indirect Discourse and Quotations are introduced by a special kind of parentheticals, minimally constituted by a subject and a predicate of saying, thinking etc. I propose that these parentheticals are represented in a syntactic structure integrated with that of the reported sentence. The phrases hosting the parentheticals are projected by prosody oriented heads, i.e., heads which do not express a lexical content, but are read at the syntax-phonology interface as special instructions for realizing the peculiar intonation associated to parentheticals, the so-called comma intonation. I show that this approach offers several advantages, contributing in solving some long standing problems connected with the syntactic status of parentheticals in general.In this chapter I consider the syntactic properties of a particular kind of parentheticals, those introducing Quotations – henceforth, QU – and Free Indirect Discourse – henceforth, FID. Consider the following examples: (1) I will leave tomorrow, said John (2) The new ration did not start till tomorrow and he had only four cigarettes left, thought Winston (adapted, from Orwell 1984). Example (1) is a QU structure and the parenthetical in question is said John. Example (2) is a FID construction and the parenthetical is thought Winston. As already well known, they have special properties from an interpretive, syntactic and phonological point of view. QU and FID parentheticals are alike under many points of view, even if the two constructions must be kept separate, especially with respect to the interpretation of pronouns and verbal forms. For the purposes of this work, I will in general consider them alike. Observe now the following paradigm: (3) John said that Mary left (4) John said: “Mary left” (5) Maria, said John, left. It seems to me that the most important goal for a syntactic analysis is to provide a coherent analysis of the similarities and differences among the constructions in (3)- (5). At first sight, these structures seem very much alike, both from the point of view of their meaning and their syntax – to the extent that some scholars have proposed a direct syntactic derivation (Emonds 1973; Ross 1973), for instance of (5) starting from (3). I will show here that the situation is indeed much more complex than that. In particular, in this paper I show that example (5) is closer to (4) than to (3). The approach I will develop here is an integrated view of parentheticals, complying with Kayne’s (1994) Linear Correspondence Axiom (LCA)

Discourse, sentence grammar and the left periphery of the clause

The term left periphery refers to that area on the left of the subject, in the syntactic representation of a clause, where the relationships with the context are encoded. In this work I propose a syntactic analysis that goes beyond mere sentence grammar and integrates prosodic and discourse features as well. On the one hand, this move accounts for some observations previously not fully understood, such as the anomalous syntactic properties of Clitic Left Dislocation and Hanging Topic, their differences with respect to Focus and their similarities with parentheticals. On the other, it aims at providing a theory of grammar able to encode the relationships between sentence grammar, context and bigger units such as discourses

From pitch to purpose : the prosodic-pragmatic mapping of [I + verb] belief constructions in English and Mandarin

Prosody has often been considered a universal cue of prominence across languages. This paper presents the results of a study that aimed to provide congruent data on the question of universality vs. cross-linguistic variability of pragmatic--prosodic mappings (prosodic variation as a cue to pragmatic interpretation) in a specific linguistic construction, namely, [I + verb] belief constructs before an opinion. Specifically, this study presents a perception test implemented to investigate the phenomenon of cross-linguistic pragmatic-prosodic mapping in [I + verb] belief constructs. Since opinions carry inherent notions of speaker belief, these constructions may initially appear superfluous. However, [I + verb] forms may actually fulfill various pragmatic functions depending on prosodic variation. Usage of various pragmatic functions of this construct was analyzed and compared between native Mandarin and English speakers using the most common belief verb, ‘‘think’’ (‘juede’ in Mandarin). Results illustrated that confidence rating of prosodic--syntactic [I + verb] variations were linked to pragmatic implicatures generated via alternative semantics theory. Furthermore, the same confidence rating trends appeared across both Mandarin and English, exhibiting a similar pragmatic-prosodic mapping for [I + verb] across these typologically different languages. This study thereby provides validity of prosody as a cross-linguistic pragmatic tool to express speaker attitude.publishe