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« NSF Fellowships to Andrew McKenzie and Jonah Katz | Main | The Kratzer Cantation»

Geraldine Legendre Colloquium

Geraldine Legendre
Johns Hopkins

On the typology of auxiliary selection

Friday, April 7, 3:30 pm, Machmer W-26

Abstract

My talk will address the issue of auxiliary selection (be vs. have) in both the present perfect and in passive constructions cross-linguistically. The present perfect exhibits considerable variation cross-linguistically. Some well-known languages (e.g. Italian, French, Dutch, and German) exhibit a split; others exclusively select have (e.g. Spanish); yet others exclusively select be (e.g. Slavic languages, Shetland English, and some Italian dialects). In contrast, the choice of auxiliary in passive constructions in these languages is highly restricted: it's never have, it's (almost) exclusively be. I propose that the choice of a particular auxiliary in a given context in any language results from optimizing over two mappings: one between lexico-aspectual properties and argument status (internal vs. external), the other between argument status and the marked auxiliary have -- provided the constraints on such mappings are violable and rerankable cross-linguistically. In particular, I argue against a direct mapping from lexico-aspectual properties to auxiliary, derive three universals of auxiliary selection from the formal OT analysis, and discuss how the Unaccusative Hypothesis should be construed from the present perspective.