In the south slavonic garden: landscaping the landscape od arguments and non-arguments

This paper deals with morphological, syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic aspects of the so-called Cognate Object Construction with particular reference to Serbo-Croatian and Slovene. The relevance of an examination of such morphologically robust languages is manifold. It facilitates an understanding...

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Main Author: Marijana Marelj
Format: Article
Language:deu
Published: University of Ljubljana Press (Založba Univerze v Ljubljani) 2016-12-01
Series:Linguistica
Subjects:
Online Access:https://journals.uni-lj.si/linguistica/article/view/7206
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author Marijana Marelj
author_facet Marijana Marelj
author_sort Marijana Marelj
collection DOAJ
description This paper deals with morphological, syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic aspects of the so-called Cognate Object Construction with particular reference to Serbo-Croatian and Slovene. The relevance of an examination of such morphologically robust languages is manifold. It facilitates an understanding of some of the puzzling properties of the construction cross linguistically, offers a way of explaining the noted disagreement regarding judgments found in the literature on Germanic languages such as English and also presents a clear case where (contrary to the dominant view in the literature) morphology seems to deceive, rather than inform us, about syntax. Based on a barrage of tests, I argue that there are two types of cognate objects: arguments and non-arguments. Extending the treatment of modifiers within the Davidsonian tradition to the latter, I analyse them as first-order predicates. This allows me to capture their core properties, among which is the obligatory modification, something unaccounted for in the literature. The semantic parallelism between the adverbial modifiers and non-ACOs extends to the syntax as well. Treating non-ACOs as adjuncts solves the problem of the scarcity of syntactic space that arises with unaccusative verbs that license them. ACOs, on the other hand, behave syntactically and semantically like run-of-the-mill arguments and a run-of-the-mill transitive syntax can be maintained (for a majority of them) instead.
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spelling doaj.art-84d5754e97ab4ae3b6174b8adc523a002023-01-18T09:49:47ZdeuUniversity of Ljubljana Press (Založba Univerze v Ljubljani)Linguistica0024-39222350-420X2016-12-0156110.4312/linguistica.56.1.193-209In the south slavonic garden: landscaping the landscape od arguments and non-argumentsMarijana Marelj0Utrecht UniversityThis paper deals with morphological, syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic aspects of the so-called Cognate Object Construction with particular reference to Serbo-Croatian and Slovene. The relevance of an examination of such morphologically robust languages is manifold. It facilitates an understanding of some of the puzzling properties of the construction cross linguistically, offers a way of explaining the noted disagreement regarding judgments found in the literature on Germanic languages such as English and also presents a clear case where (contrary to the dominant view in the literature) morphology seems to deceive, rather than inform us, about syntax. Based on a barrage of tests, I argue that there are two types of cognate objects: arguments and non-arguments. Extending the treatment of modifiers within the Davidsonian tradition to the latter, I analyse them as first-order predicates. This allows me to capture their core properties, among which is the obligatory modification, something unaccounted for in the literature. The semantic parallelism between the adverbial modifiers and non-ACOs extends to the syntax as well. Treating non-ACOs as adjuncts solves the problem of the scarcity of syntactic space that arises with unaccusative verbs that license them. ACOs, on the other hand, behave syntactically and semantically like run-of-the-mill arguments and a run-of-the-mill transitive syntax can be maintained (for a majority of them) instead.https://journals.uni-lj.si/linguistica/article/view/7206argumentcognatepredicateunaccusativeunergative
spellingShingle Marijana Marelj
In the south slavonic garden: landscaping the landscape od arguments and non-arguments
Linguistica
argument
cognate
predicate
unaccusative
unergative
title In the south slavonic garden: landscaping the landscape od arguments and non-arguments
title_full In the south slavonic garden: landscaping the landscape od arguments and non-arguments
title_fullStr In the south slavonic garden: landscaping the landscape od arguments and non-arguments
title_full_unstemmed In the south slavonic garden: landscaping the landscape od arguments and non-arguments
title_short In the south slavonic garden: landscaping the landscape od arguments and non-arguments
title_sort in the south slavonic garden landscaping the landscape od arguments and non arguments
topic argument
cognate
predicate
unaccusative
unergative
url https://journals.uni-lj.si/linguistica/article/view/7206
work_keys_str_mv AT marijanamarelj inthesouthslavonicgardenlandscapingthelandscapeodargumentsandnonarguments