TY - CHAP
T1 - The causative alternation in Italian
T2 - A case study in the parallel architecture of grammar
AU - Bentley, Delia
PY - 2024/9
Y1 - 2024/9
N2 - The examination of 8,000 lines of authentic data suggests that the causative alternation, and the distribution of anticausative SE in Italian, cannot be reduced to a single principle, be that a facet of meaning or of syntactic structure or a pattern in the semantics-syntax interface. The analysis reveals the causative alternation to be a prime illustration of the modularity of grammar. Couching our analysis in a parallel architecture framework, Role and Reference Grammar, we argue that the boundaries of the causative alternation are established in grammar through (i) the acquisition of inchoative and causative logical structures, which are stored in the lexicon alongside non-templatic facets of meaning, (ii) general semantics-syntax mapping principles, which are subject to alignment variation, and (iii) constructional instructions, which determine which subclasses of verbs can participate in the constructions that are relevant to the causative alternation in each individual language.
AB - The examination of 8,000 lines of authentic data suggests that the causative alternation, and the distribution of anticausative SE in Italian, cannot be reduced to a single principle, be that a facet of meaning or of syntactic structure or a pattern in the semantics-syntax interface. The analysis reveals the causative alternation to be a prime illustration of the modularity of grammar. Couching our analysis in a parallel architecture framework, Role and Reference Grammar, we argue that the boundaries of the causative alternation are established in grammar through (i) the acquisition of inchoative and causative logical structures, which are stored in the lexicon alongside non-templatic facets of meaning, (ii) general semantics-syntax mapping principles, which are subject to alignment variation, and (iii) constructional instructions, which determine which subclasses of verbs can participate in the constructions that are relevant to the causative alternation in each individual language.
U2 - 10.5281/zenodo.11351540
DO - 10.5281/zenodo.11351540
M3 - Chapter
SN - 9783985541027
T3 - Empirically Oriented Theoretical Morphology and Syntax
SP - 225
EP - 273
BT - From fieldwork to linguistic theory
A2 - Gibson, Edward
A2 - Poliak, Moshe
PB - Language Science Press
CY - Berlin
ER -