DOI: 10.5507/ff.14.24440606.07

Auxiliaries as Dummies: A Late Vocabulary Insertion Approach

Mark Newson, Krisztina Szécsényi

This paper argues for the position that the English non-modal auxiliaries are dummies used to realize functional content. Taking our lead from Grimshaw (1997), we claim that dummies are the use of meaningful words with their root content being ignored. Through the idea of late vocabulary insertion, we are able to adequately model “ignoring content” as overspecification. The analysis concentrates on the following questions: Why are be, have, and do the chosen auxiliary verbs? What do they spell out in their auxiliary uses? And what determines which auxiliary will be used in a given syntactic environment? The analysis is carried out in the Syntax First Alignment system, a heavily restricted Optimality theoretic grammar. A radical feature of this system which differentiates it from most other OT grammars and late vocabulary insertion approaches is that it operates with linear ordering rather than constituent structure.

pages: 99-113



References

  1. Akmajian, Adrian. 1984. "Sentence Types and the Form-function Fit." Natural Language & Linguistic Theory 1 (2): 1-23. Go to original source...
  2. Bresnan, Joan. 2000. "Optimal Syntax." In Optimality Theory: Phonology, Syntax and Acquisition, edited by Joost Dekkers, Frank van der Leeuw, and Jeroen van de Weijer, 334- 385. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press.
  3. Cowper, Elizabeth. 1989. "Perfective -en IS Passive -en." In Proceedings of the Eighth West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics, edited by E. Jane Fee and Kathryn Hunt, 85-93. Stanford: CSLI.
  4. Dikken, Marcel den. 2006. Relators and Linkers: The Syntax of Predication, Predicate Inversion, and Copulas. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press. MARK NEWSON AND KRISZTINA SZÉCSÉNYI
  5. Freeze, Ray. 1992. "Existentials and Other Locatives." Language 68 (3): 553-596. Go to original source...
  6. Grimshaw, Jane B. 1997. "Projection, Heads and Optimality." Linguistic Inquiry 28: 373-422.
  7. Guéron, Jacqueline. 1986. "Le Verbe 'avoir'." Recherches Linguistiqes 14: 155-188.
  8. Harley, Heidi. 1995. "Subjects, Events and Licensing." PhD diss. Cambridge: Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
  9. Harley, Heidi. 1998. "You're Having Me On: Aspects of Have." In La Grammaire de La Possession, edited by Jacqueline Guéron and Anne Zribi-Hertz, 195-226. Paris- Nanterre: Université Paris X.
  10. Harley, Heidi, and Rolf Noyer. 1998. "Mixed Nominalizations, Short Verb Movement, and Object Shift in English." In Proceedings of North East Linguistic Society 28, edited by Pius N. Tamanji and Kiyomi Kusumoto, 143-157. Amherst: GLSA.
  11. Hoekstra, Teun. 1995. "To Have to Be Dative." In Studies in Comparative Germanic Syntax, edited by Hubert Haider, Susan Olson, and Sten Vikner, 119-37. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers.
  12. Iatridou, Sabine, Elena Anagnostopoulou, and Roumayana Izvorski. 2001. "Observations and the Form and Meaning of the Perfect." In Ken Hale: A Life in Language, edited by M. Kenstowicz, 189-238. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
  13. Kayne, Richard S. 1993. "Toward a Modular Theory of Auxiliary Selection." Studia Linguistica 47: 3-31. Go to original source...
  14. Marantz, Alec. 1997. "No Escape from Syntax: Don't Try Morphological Analysis in the Privacy of Your Own Lexicon." In Proceedings of the 21st Annual Penn Linguistics Colloquium, Vol. 4 (2) of University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics, edited by Alexis Dimitriadis, Laura Siegel, Clarissa Surek-Clark, and Alexander Williams, 201-225. Philadelphia: Penn Graduate Linguistics Society.
  15. McFadden, Thomas and Artemis Alexiadou. 2010. "Perfects, Resultatives, and Auxiliaries in Earlier English." Linguistic Inquiry 41 (3): 389-425. Go to original source...
  16. Newson, Mark. 2008. "The English Modal Auxiliaries." In The Even Yearbook, Vol. 8 of ELTE SEAS Working Papers in Linguistics, edited by László Varga. Budapest: Department of English Linguistics, Eötvös Loránd University. http://seas3.elte.hu/delg/publications/even/2008/08ne.pdf.
  17. Newson, Mark. 2010. "Syntax First, Words after: A Possible Consequence of Doing Alignment Syntax Without a Lexicon." In The Even Yearbook, Vol. 9 of ELTE SEAS Working Papers in Linguistics, edited by László Varga. Budapest: Department of English Linguistics, Eötvös Loránd University. http://seas3.elte.hu/delg/publications/even/2010/10ne.pdf.
  18. Newson, Mark. 2013. "What You Can Do with a Domain and Why They Are Not Phrases." In VLLXX: Papers Presented to László Varga on His 70th Birthday, edited by Péter Szigetvári. Budapest: Department of English Linguistics, Eötvös Loránd University. http://seas3.elte.hu/vllxx.
  19. Newson, Mark, and Krisztina Szécsényi. 2012. "Dummy Auxiliaries and Late Vocabulary Insertion." In The Even Yearbook, Vol. 9 of ELTE SEAS Working Papers in Linguistics, edited by László Varga. Budapest: Department of English Linguistics, Eötvös Loránd University. http://seas3.elte.hu/delg/publications/even/2012/12ns.pdf.
  20. Ouhalla, Jamal. 1991. Functional Categories and Parametric Variation. London and New York: Routledge. AUXILIARIES AS DUMMIES: A LATE VOCABULARY INSERTION APPROACH
  21. Reichenbach, Hans. 1947. Elements of Symbolic Logic. New York: Free Press.
  22. Smith, Carlota S. 1997. The Parameter of Aspect. 2nd ed. Vol. 43 of Studies in Linguistics and Philosophy. Dordrecht and Boston: Kluwer. Go to original source...
  23. Starke, Michal. 2009. "Nanosyntax - A Short Primer to a New Approach to Language." In Nordlyd 36 (1), edited by Peter Svenonius, Gillian Ramchand, Michal Starke, and Knut Tarald Taraldsen, 1-6. Tromsø: CASTL. Available at http://www.ub.uit.no/baser/nordlyd/. Go to original source...