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University of Bologna
program: Tuesday, June 10 | Wednesday, June 11 | Thursday, June 12
Friday, June 13 | Saturday, June 14
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Miroslava AUROVÁ, Charles University Prague
Non-nominative structures in Latin (and Spanish): Diachronic change
The so called nominative-accusative (henceforth, NA) structure was reconstructed for the Indo-European languages. An NA structure is such a structure where the use of nominative (morphological or positional) was grammaticalized for the function of subject, and the use of accusative (morphological or positional), for the object. Under the notion of non-nominative (henceforth, non-N) structures I understand such structures which do not show that patterns. These structures occur, to a different extent in different languages, also in NA languages. In concrete, I deal with the following characteristics of Latin: (i) sentences presenting other predicate types than finite verb and other type of basic arguments than NOM and ACC; (ii) absence of agreement, or other agreement type.
I compare these Latin structures with Spanish ones. Most of the works dealing with the question in issue were focused from a semantic point of view; I described these constructions by means of purely syntactic approaches, mainly of G&B (Government and Binding) theory and its modification in terms of MP (minimalist Programm). The definition of such structures made in terms of G&B is as follows:
The subjetc is assigned a nominative case because of its position in [Spec, IP], where it is moved to from [Spec, VP], a base-generated position. The object is assigned an accusitive case on the basis of its position in [VP, NP]. It this case, both nominative and accusative represents the so called structural cases. From the MP perspective, they control subject and object agreements by means of the extended IP, i.e. AGRoS and AGRsP, respectively. We can call those types of subject and object as structural (it accors with a notion of "grammatical", see expletives, for example).
In my contribution I deal with the following questions: (i) where are these "semantic subjects and objects" generated; (ii) how do they behave in respect to AgrP (evidently, they do not show any type of agreement), (iii) how do they obey different types of transformation (passivization, for example: creditur mihi - credunt mihi vs, videtur mihi - *vident mihi - video.) The difference between such Latin constructions and the Spanish ones reflects the diachronic variation of that parametre, related to the passage from an inflectional to an analytic language type.
Most recent modifications: February 18, 2003 – latling@classics.unibo.it
Source: Dipartimento di Filologia Classica e Medioevale
No rights can be derived from the information on this Internet-page.
I compare these Latin structures with Spanish ones. Most of the works dealing with the question in issue were focused from a semantic point of view; I described these constructions by means of purely syntactic approaches, mainly of G&B (Government and Binding) theory and its modification in terms of MP (minimalist Programm). The definition of such structures made in terms of G&B is as follows:
The subjetc is assigned a nominative case because of its position in [Spec, IP], where it is moved to from [Spec, VP], a base-generated position. The object is assigned an accusitive case on the basis of its position in [VP, NP]. It this case, both nominative and accusative represents the so called structural cases. From the MP perspective, they control subject and object agreements by means of the extended IP, i.e. AGRoS and AGRsP, respectively. We can call those types of subject and object as structural (it accors with a notion of "grammatical", see expletives, for example).
In my contribution I deal with the following questions: (i) where are these "semantic subjects and objects" generated; (ii) how do they behave in respect to AgrP (evidently, they do not show any type of agreement), (iii) how do they obey different types of transformation (passivization, for example: creditur mihi - credunt mihi vs, videtur mihi - *vident mihi - video.) The difference between such Latin constructions and the Spanish ones reflects the diachronic variation of that parametre, related to the passage from an inflectional to an analytic language type.
Most recent modifications: February 18, 2003 – latling@classics.unibo.it
Source: Dipartimento di Filologia Classica e Medioevale
No rights can be derived from the information on this Internet-page.