Morphological processes

Before embarking upon a more detailed discussion of the syntactic and semantic properties of unaccusatives, with the aim of justifying the analysis outlined above, I need

to consider in more detail some aspects of the morphological component. Operations which hold at this level I have so far assumed to be of a unitary nature; affixation of bound to free morphemes, together with the specification of neutral features associated with functional categories. At this point, however, it seems that adjunction also becomes a relevant operation; so it is necessary to differentiate between two different ways in which affixes can be associated with stems (or roots). It is also necessary to clarify exactly which morphemes I consider to be derivational (and therefore substantive) in nature, and which are inflectional (and therefore functional).

3.2.1 Adjunction and affixation

A crucial assumption here is that there are two possible ways in which bound functional morphemes can be associated with substantives; affixation and adjunction. In fact, this assumption is far from new. In versions of Principles and Parameters theory which pre-date Chomsky (1993), it was considered that inflectional affixes were ‘picked up ’ by a substantive category (say a verb) as it progressed through the syntactic derivation via repeated adjunction to various functional heads. Since Chomsky (1993), it is considered that an affixed verb enters the syntactic derivation with all its affixes already in place (rather than ‘collecting’ its affixes as it progresses through the syntactic derivation); so affixation and adjunction are no longer different instantiations of essentially the same process. Features associated with each morpheme affixed to a lexical category are checked, via overt movement to functional heads (which is reflected at PF), or covert (feature) movement after Spell Out (which is not reflected at PF); checking relationships are, between heads, established by adjunction. So it seems that adjunction processes are still somehow connected with the realisation of morphological properties.

Recall that, in the case of MC, there is strong evidence against a view of morphological processes being divided between the syntax and some other morphological component (perhaps the lexicon); we have seen evidence that the presence o f a syntactic frame supports his ability to recognise functional categories which he cannot realise in isolation, and also that many functional categories are realised

appropriately in M C ’s syntax. Therefore, I cannot adopt a view of affixation as being both lexical and syntactic in nature (cf. discussion of the split morphology hypothesis - section 1.1.1). I assume that affixation of all kinds takes place in the morphological component; the only new proposal I am putting forward for the moment is that some functional categories may be morphologically realised as affixed tq a substantive, whereas some may be realised as adjoined to a substantive. Presumably, the property of adjoining or affixing to a substantive is lexically stated as part of the lexical representation of a bound functional category.

To place this discussion on a more concrete footing, consider Tense. Tense has a lexical representation (in the UG lexicon) which means that it is realised not only as an affix which can attach to certain categories of substantive (namely V), but also as a functional head with its own projection in the syntax, where corresponding affixes realised on V are checked. This contrasts with a functional category which must be adjoined to its associated substantive, rather than affixed; such a functional category is not realised as both affix (in the morphology) and head (in the syntax), but only as head (morphologically and syntactically). An important function of the morphological interface is to yield representations derived from lexical entries (in the substantive and UG lexica) in a format which can be utilised for the derivation of syntactic structures. It is logical, then, to assume that a morphological representation (which is presented to the syntax) includes instructions as to the structural reflex of the morphological properties which have been identified. In the case of Tense, the structural reflex is a whole projection headed by Tense, where features carried by the Tense affix on V can be checked. In the case of an adjoined morpheme, this would be realised in the syntax as ju st a head of its own phrase; there is no need for it to receive a ‘split’ representation (as both head and affix), because the relevant features remain associated with the functional head in the morphology, rather than passing to a substantive.

The fact that MC makes both affixation errors and function word substitution errors on reading verbs with an unaccusative realisation is support for the notion that these are morphologically realised in a different way to other verbs (which he never misidentifies as functional). M C ’s affixation errors result from his failure to recognise affixed functional categories in the morphological component. Function word errors, on the other hand, result from a misidentification of the whole item - stem, affix, and

whatever other material is present - as a functional category. This is straightforwardly accounted for on the assumption that affixation and adjunction of functional categories to substantives are separate processes, and that they both occur at the level of the morphological interface. The former result in affixation errors, but the latter - because a substantive which has been adjoined to a functional head is effectively headed by that item - result in function word substitution errors.

3.2.2 Inflection and derivation

Importantly for this discussion, I assume that affixes which alter argument structure without changing the category of the stem are inflectional (i.e. functional), rather than derivational. This therefore includes morphology associated with passives, causatives, reflexives, middles and (so I will suggest) unaccusatives. Many derivational affixes inevitably affect argument structure, but in doing so they also change the category of the stem with which they are associated. To repeat: I draw a distinction between argument-structure-changing affixes which result in a category change, and those which do not; the former I will consider derivational, and the latter, inflectional.

This distinction contrasts with a related one drawn by Sadler and Spencer (1998), within a split morphology perspective; they distinguish ‘meaning-changing’ operations (which, on their view, are morpholexical and which alter the semantics^ of a predicate - cf. derivational morphology) from ‘meaning-preserving’ operations (which are morphosyntactic and which alter the syntactic representation of a particular semantics - cf. inflectional morphology). The different ways of drawing such distinctions have interesting consequences - for instance, on Sadler and Spencer’s view, middles and passives must be derived from different components of the grammar (the former are morpholexically derived and the latter are morphosyntactically derived), whereas I would assume that both middles and passives (and unaccusatives, adjectival passives, reflexives, causatives - see sections 3.3 and 3.4.3 below for further and comparative discussion of all the types of verbal realisation which I mention rather fleetingly at this point) are realised at the level of the morphological component. There is a prediction here for investigations of derivational / inflectional distinctions in aphasia; patients like

FS (Miceli and Caramazza 1988 - see section 1.3.2), who have greater difficulty with inflectional than derivational morphology, should make more errors involving middles than passives if Sadler and Spencer are right, but equal errors on both constructions if my assumptions are correct. Unfortunately no such data are available, and MC does not show a distinction between inflectional and derivational affixation (as well as having multiple and complex difficulties with reading of phrases and sentences which make his performance at this level difficult to interpret), so he does not provide a suitable testing ground for these hypotheses. Nevertheless, the difficulties of Broca’s aphasies with passive constructions are widely documented (e.g. Caplan and Putter 1986, Grodzinsky 1990, Druks and Marshall 1991, and many others), and this is support for my characterisation of passive morphology as inflectional, for instance, since one of the defining characteristics of Broca’s aphasia is a difficulty with inflectional morphology (e.g. Howard 1985, Goodglass 1993).

Let me for a moment consider passive. If passive morphology is inflectional, as it must be on the definition of the derivational / inflectional dichotomy which I have adopted here, then it follows that passives are associated with a functional category (sometimes realised as the inflectional morpheme -enŸ. Unfortunately, realisations of the passive morpheme are often (in English) identical to realisations of the past tense form of the verb {-ed). Passive forms of verbs have been presented to MC for reading, but his errors tend to consist in substitution or omission of the passive affix, so that he typically produces a present participle or a bare infinitive rather than the passive form (Appendix XU). In other words, it is impossible to ascertain whether MC is recognising the functional affix associated with passives, or whether he is simply assigning some (random) affixed form to the verb. On current reasoning, however, his errors are suggestive that PASS (or whatever morpheme is assumed to be associated with a verb so that it is syntactically realised as a passive) is affixed, and not adjoined, to V; this is why he does not make function word substitution errors on reading passives.

If MC is really making function word substitution errors on presentation of covert functional categories in a reading task, these will only be expected to show up on

^ The notion o f a functional category associated with passive is not new; for example, Rivero (1990) argues that V oice should head its own functional projection, with Passive being one manifestation of Voice; and Cinque (1999) similarly assumes the existence of a functional head Voice.

a class o f words which are obligatorily adjoined to (headed by) a covert functional morpheme, which do not rely on a syntactic context for their instantiation. M iddles, for example, are only identifiable as middles when they are placed within a particular kind of sentence frame. The same is true of other kinds of verbal morphology: for instance, causatives and reflexives are only identified as such within a particular syntactic frame which is the reflex in the computational component of their realisation at the level of morphology. If they are presented to MC for reading in isolation, however, they could be identified as ordinary tensed verbs, and MC would be expected to treat them as such.

Unaccusatives, however, seem to be exceptional in this regard. An unaccusative verb remains unaccusative, even when presented in isolation; and it need not bear any overtly realised affixation. In the next section I propose a morphological account of unaccusativity, based on suggestions by Reinhart (1997) and Pesetsky (1995), but extended to involve adjunction of a functional morpheme to an underlyingly transitive verb, resulting in unaccusative syntax. I then return to M C ’s reading data, and show how they provide support for the notion that unaccusatives are adjoined to functional heads (though the possibility that there is a semantic trigger for unaccusative syntax is not denied).