Challenging traditional assumptions on the Conative Alternation

AUSENSI, JOSEP; MANGIALAVORI RASIA, MARÍA EUGENIA

London

Congreso; 2019 Annual Meeting of the Linguistics Association of Great Britain; 2019

Queen Mary University of London

Challenging traditional assumptions on the Conative AlternationIn the conative alternation [CA], like in other transitivity alternations, the change in argumentstructure realization coincides with a shift in meaning and aspectual entailments. Even if thealternation?generally attested with verbs whose meaning includes MOVEMENT AND CONTACT(Guerssel et al., 1985; Goldberg 1995, Levin &Rappaport[LR] 2015, Leek 1996)?is fullyproductive across several languages, like English, Danish, German; it is commonly claimed to beunavailable in Romance (but see Míguez 2016 on Galician). (1) illustrates the alleged restriction.(1) a. Juan comió la manzana. b. *Juan comió *en/*a la manzana (Spanish)Juan ate the apple Juan ate ?on/okat the apple (English)Here, based on corpus data from Old Spanish [OSp] (12th-17th c., from Sánchez-Marco et al.2009 [SM] and Corpus del Español [CES]) we show that CA is not only possible, but also fullyproductive in Romance grammars. Three empirically and theoretically relevant facts are noted:➢ OSp shows the hallmarks of prototypical (e.g. English) CA, affecting similar verb classes, likecutting (cortar ?cut?, morder ?bite?) (2), contact (dar ?hit?, disparar ?shoot?)(3), and consumptionverbs (beber ?drink?,comer ?eat?)(4); and showing the same (telic-to-atelic) shift in aspect alongwith the (e.g. missed contact) entailments that define CA (cf. the inceptive, atelic predicate, itslack of culminative reading, and the missed contact entailment in in (5)a.)➢ CA is actually more productive in OSp, as it allows CA in verbs commonly believed unableto produce CA like change-of-state/location (COSL) verbs (5) (matar ?kill?, destrozar ?shatter?,destruir ?destroy?, derribar ?knock down?, ferir ?hurt?, romper ?break?) as well as pure contactverbs (6) like tocar ?touch? (cf. English Janet broke/touched *at the vase, Levin 1993, Beavers2011). This is theoretically crucial, as it indicates that MOTION+CONTACT denotation may rendera sufficient condition for CA but not a necessary one, as generally assumed.➢ OSp instantiates the possibility that certain verbs (cf. break), may enter both the causativealternation and CA, a pattern so far assumed not to occur in natural languages (Levin 2017 i.a.).(2) a. Y comienço a cenar y morder en mis tripas y pan (16th c., SM)and start.1p to dine and bite in my guts and bread?And [I] start to dine and bite at my intestines and bread?b. Pues tiene vuestra alteza primero que cortar en mi cabeza. (17th c., CES)then have your highness first that cut in my head?Then your highness has to cut at my head first?(3) Y ordenó el Emperador que disparasen en los enemigos para que se apartasen. (16thc SM)and ordered el Emperor that shoot.SBJ.3P in the enemies for thatse move-away?And the Emperor ordered them to shoot #(at) the enemies so that they would move away?(4) Asento se sobre el canto et el buitre cesso de comer en la molleja (15th c., CES)seated se over the pebble and the vulture ceased of eat in the gizzard?He sat on the pebble and the vulture stopped eating at the gizzard?(5) a. Luego fueron contra ellos y començaron a matar en ellos y aprehenderlos. (13th c., SM)then went against them and started to kill in them and capture-them?Then [they] advanced towards them and started to kill at and capture them?b. Arrebatadamente destroçan en los griegos por duros. (15th c., SM)violently shatter.3P in the Greeks for hard?They violently shatter at the Greeks because they are strong?c. Aquel emperador yendo destruyendo en aquella yent. (13th c., SM)that emperor going destroying in that people?That emperor was destroying at that people? d. suares fue derribando en ellos fasta en la meatad de la puente. (14th c., SM)Suares went knocking-down in them until in the middle of the bridge?Suarez advanced knocking down at them up to the middle of the bridge?e. No se atrevió a romper en ellos, porque los vio fuertes. (16th c., SM)no SE dared to break in them because ACC.3M.PL saw strong?He didn?t dare to break at them apart, since he saw theywere strong?(6) El rey de Portugal prohibio que tocassen en las rayzes. (16th c., SM)the king of Portugal forbade that touch-SBJ-3P in the roots?The King of Portugal forbade them to touch at the roots.?PROPOSALConsumption Verbs: OSp data crucially reflect a general premise: conatives are set apart by its lackof result entailment and noncompletive interpretation (Krifka1999) (see the constructions withcomenzar a ?start to? with otherwise punctual predicates like morder and matar. Also here,oblique realization of the object correlates to an interpretive shift from telic to atelic, reflectingthe usual distinction that relies on realization of the object in this alternation (LR 2005:212) (cf.(5)b vs. He begun to kill them). Importantly, all attested telic occurrences of ingestion verbs lackthe preposition. Moreover, according to CES and SM data, conative variants combine with cessarde ?stop? (4) but not with acavar de ?finish?, which is the prototypical pattern of atelic predicates.COSL verbs: alternation between direct/oblique (PP) object expression in OSp also reflect alternationbetween telic/atelic uses. (7)a is natural as the conative only entails that an unspecified (nonquantized)amount of people was killed(cf.the DO variant ?he killed them #as much as he could?). Causative/transitivecountreparts entail total affectedness, hence telicity(cf. (7)b).In (7)a, the quantificational phrase introducesa boundary to the event that is otherwise missing, in contrast to (7)b). This is crucial, as it showsthat evenif the P used in OSp is different (not the standard target P a ?at?, but the locative en ?in?), it still yields theevent-type shift that sets CA apart (van Hout 1996 i.a.). Crucially, all the aspectually-sensitive selectionalpatterns attested in OSp reflect the expected consequencesfor the transitivity alternation yielded by CA.Incontrast, Spanish variants with a ?at? (used by Acevedo 2011 to argue for the existence of CA in (Modern)Spanish [MSp]) render aspectually trivial, as they do not diverge from DO forms in the expected respects.VERBS OF CONTACT: OSp alternation also yields a similar change in aspect. The generalization proposed forEnglish (Vendler 1967; Dowty 1979) holds, as OSp conatives do not necessarily involve a result state ((3)allows for the entailment that contact did not obtain as a result.Unlike MSpprepositionalvariants (Acevedo2011), they succeed in delivering the missed contact entailment((≈He shot at them so they moved away)expected from hit-conatives (cf. MSp golpeó a la puerta #pero no la tocó ?He hit at the door but didn?ttouch it?),otherwise both (3)and (5)awould be conceptually odd. In turn, the productivitywith pure contactverbs (6)shows that assumed general restrictions on CA (LR 2015i.a.) may actually be language-specific.(7) a. mataua en ellos quanto alcançaua. (14thc SM)kill.PST.IMP.3S in them how-much sufficed?He killed at them as many as he could?b. Los sieruos que mataron a sus señores. (15thc SM)?The servants that killed their lords?To account for previously unattested data (e.g. COSL CA), we propose that OSp verbs with productivecausative and conative alternation allow a choice in the vº introducing the EXT(ERNAL)Argument,thus instantiating a Cause(r)|Agent opposition amenable to a distribution linked to distinct (EXTargument-introducing) v heads in the literature. While vDO requires an animate agent subject, thesubject licensed by vCAUSE only needs to be interpretable as probable cause (Folli & Harley 2005,2007). We argue this structural alternative explains the possibility of CA in causative verbs likematar: whereas the EXTArgument in the causative only requires cause interpretation (La ponçoñalo mato ?Poison killed him?(15thc SM)), the one with matar (null in (5)a|(7)a) in CA requiresintentional, agentive reading in all attested cases. Thus, the proposed analysis (conative (8)a vs.causative (8)b) alternates would capture the distribution of restricted subject (agent) interpretation in CA, vs. nonrestricted in causative-alternation forms of the same verbs. If correct, observedfacts follow from the possibility that both derivational paths are available for these verbs at leastin OSp. New data (Múgica&Mangialavori 2018) from Argentinian MSp supportsuch possibility,as verbs derived via EAR show the hallmarks of a conative-structure-like derivation (result+telicitydrop, missed contact entailment) with root-incorporated quantized targets yielding atelic verbs(Cockteleamos por horas (lit. We cocktail-ed for hours) ≈?We drank at cocktail for hours).(8) a. [vP [DP1 ,v? [vDO , PP [TARGET en DP2]]]] b. [vP [DP1 ,v? [vCAUSE, SC [DP2 , RES√]]]]