Expressing perception in parallel ways

The article shows that analytic causative constructions are more grammaticalized in French and Italian than in Spanish and Portuguese, both in meaning (semantic bleaching of the verb ‘to make’) and in synthesis (structural event integration). It is pointed out, moreover, that Italian fare + infinitive is semantically and structurally more grammaticalized than French faire + infinitive, and that the emergence of the inflected infinitive in the clausal complements of causative and perception verbs in Portuguese has made the Portuguese causative constructions less integrated, and thus less grammaticalized, than the Spanish ones. The conclusion of this study is that there exists a decreasing continuum of grammaticalization of causative constructions in Romance languages, that starts with Italian and goes on to French, Spanish and Portuguese, in that order.

Perception verbs – such as look, see, taste, hear, feel, sound, listen, and observe – present unresolved problems for linguistic theories. This book examines the predictability of relations between their semantics and syntactic behaviour, the different kinds of polysemy they exhibit, and the role of evidentiality in verbs like seem and appear. After an opening chapter explaining the nature of the issues, there is a concise introduction to Word Grammar. Chapter 3 considers the implications of the approach for a general theory of event structure, and looks at how Word Grammar can be applied to causation, argument linking, and the modelling of polysemy. Chapter 4 explores the polysemy of see; chapter 5 looks at relations between verbs of active perception like listen, and verbs of involuntary perception such as hear; chapter 6 explores the semantics of non‐finite predicative complementation; and chapter 7 discusses verbs of appearance. Chapter 8 presents some conclusions.

All languages have expressions, typically pronominals and anaphors, that may or must depend for their interpretation on another expression, their antecedent. When such a dependency is subject to structural conditions, it reflects binding. Although there is considerable variation in binding patterns cross-linguistically, in fact, variation is along a limited set of parameters. The Germanic languages exemplify some of the main factors involved. In Germanic, third-person pronominals generally do not allow binding by a co-argument. However, in Frisian and Afrikaans, they do, being embedded in a richer structure than meets the eye. In Continental West Germanic and Scandinavian, anaphors come in two types: simplex anaphors (SE-anaphors)—deficient for number and gender—and complex anaphors (SELF-anaphors). These typically consist of a pronominal or SE-anaphor combined with an element like Dutch zelf ‘self’ or one of its cognates. In all the Germanic languages SELF-anaphors are bound in their local domain—approximately the domain of their nearest subject—except in a few identifiable positions, where they are interpreted logophorically. That is, they accept a non-local antecedent, provided this element holds the perspective of the sentence. The distribution of SE-anaphors involves three different conditions. First, they can be bound by a co-argument only if the verb belongs to a restricted class, which allows syntactic detransitivization. Second, in general, SE-anaphors allow non-local binding. But the conditions differ among subgroups. In Dutch and German, they can only be bound non-locally when contained in a causative or perception verb complement or a small clause. In Mainland Scandinavian, non-local binding is, in principle, available to all infinitival clauses (subject to some dialectal variation). For instance, in some varieties of Norwegian, referentiality of intervening subjects restricts binding; in other varieties, the restricting factor is not “finiteness” but “being specified for tense.” Third, in Icelandic long-distance antecedents beyond the infinitival domain are licensed by a subjunctive, together with the requirement that the antecedent holds the perspective. Faroese largely patterns like Icelandic, although lacking a subjunctive. However, the class of verbs that allow this pattern coincides with the class of verbs in Icelandic that have a subjunctive complement. Non-local binding of SE-anaphors is sensitive to the requirement that the antecedent be animate, but the languages show differences in the details. Unlike the West Germanic languages, the Scandinavian languages all have a possessive reflexive in third person. In general, their distribution appears to be quite close to that of SE-anaphors, but this is subject to dialectal variation, with various differences in the details.

Change through recombination: blending and analogy