Reflexively marked anticausatives are not semantically reflexive
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Florian Schäfer
Abstract
We discuss the recent proposal by Koontz-Garboden (2009) (cf. also Chierchia 2004) that reflexively marked anticausative verbs (in Romance languages and beyond) are semantically reflexive. This proposal predicts that a sentence headed by a lexical causative verb should not entail the sentence headed by the reflexively marked anticausative counterpart. We uncover problems with the main argument for this claim and add further tests which show that a causative sentence does, in fact, entail its anticausative counterpart, whether reflexively marked or not. Our findings support standard semantics of the causative alternation according to which anticausatives, whether reflexively marked or not, denote inchoative one-place predicates. They also reconfirm that the relevant reflexive morphology is syncretic and does not necessarily derive reflexive semantics.
Abstract
We discuss the recent proposal by Koontz-Garboden (2009) (cf. also Chierchia 2004) that reflexively marked anticausative verbs (in Romance languages and beyond) are semantically reflexive. This proposal predicts that a sentence headed by a lexical causative verb should not entail the sentence headed by the reflexively marked anticausative counterpart. We uncover problems with the main argument for this claim and add further tests which show that a causative sentence does, in fact, entail its anticausative counterpart, whether reflexively marked or not. Our findings support standard semantics of the causative alternation according to which anticausatives, whether reflexively marked or not, denote inchoative one-place predicates. They also reconfirm that the relevant reflexive morphology is syncretic and does not necessarily derive reflexive semantics.
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Introduction vii
-
Word order and related pragmatic or semantic effects
- Focus fronting and its implicatures 1
- Romance causatives and object shift 21
- Conditionally interpreted declaratives in Spanish 39
- Microparametric variation in Old ItaloRomance syntax 51
- Different effects of syntactic knowledge, associative memory and working memory in L2 processing of filler-gap dependencies 67
-
Morphology and semantics of the verb and verb placement
- The paradigmatic instantiation of TAM 85
- Deriving the readings of French être en train de 103
- On the syntax of datives in unaccusative configurations 119
- The perfect between Latin and Romance 159
- Productivity and Portuguese morphology 175
- Reflexively marked anticausatives are not semantically reflexive 203
-
Morphosyntax of the DP and its relation to clause structure
- Deverbal nominalization with the ‘Down’-operator 223
- The (non-)grammaticalization of possession in Guatemalan Spanish 239
- On Spanish possessive formation 261
- Language Index 277
- Subject Index 279
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Introduction vii
-
Word order and related pragmatic or semantic effects
- Focus fronting and its implicatures 1
- Romance causatives and object shift 21
- Conditionally interpreted declaratives in Spanish 39
- Microparametric variation in Old ItaloRomance syntax 51
- Different effects of syntactic knowledge, associative memory and working memory in L2 processing of filler-gap dependencies 67
-
Morphology and semantics of the verb and verb placement
- The paradigmatic instantiation of TAM 85
- Deriving the readings of French être en train de 103
- On the syntax of datives in unaccusative configurations 119
- The perfect between Latin and Romance 159
- Productivity and Portuguese morphology 175
- Reflexively marked anticausatives are not semantically reflexive 203
-
Morphosyntax of the DP and its relation to clause structure
- Deverbal nominalization with the ‘Down’-operator 223
- The (non-)grammaticalization of possession in Guatemalan Spanish 239
- On Spanish possessive formation 261
- Language Index 277
- Subject Index 279
