IDENTIFICACIÓN, DESCRIPCIÓN Y EVALUACIÓN DE LOS IMPACTOS AMBIENTALES

6.5.1 Background assumptions

Under a neo-Davidsonian semantic representation (Davidson 1967; Higginbotham 1985; Parsons 1990), every verb contains an event position in its theta-grid, available for modiWcation and theta-binding. Further, thematic roles are represented as separate relations connecting the event to an individ- ual. See the representation of the simple sentence in (28).

(28) Miriam drank Wve whiskies in the pub last night.

9e[drinking(e; ‘Miriam’,‘5whiskies’) & last-night(e) & in-the-pub(e) & Cul(e)]

Our approach will share the intuition of the neo-Davidsonian position that event variables are a crucial element in the logical representation of sentences. We will take this a little further, and assume that the event position classically taken to be associated with a single lexical item may actually be internally complex. In other words, we believe that certain complex events can be decomposed into sub-events which are potentially events in their own right, but which can combine in a number of systematic ways to produce the more complex forms. The possibilities for event combination at this level are not simply mereological, as in the lattice-theoretic approach of Link (1983) but correspond to two distinct types of event–event relation which we take to be part of the semantic ontology.

The Wrst relation between events that we think is important is the relation of ‘causation’. This relation has already found favour in a number of recent approaches to event and argument decomposition in the syntax (Hale and Keyser 1993; Ritter and Rosen 1998) and semantics (Dowty 1979; Jack- endoV 1990; Levin and Rappaport Hovav 1995). The idea is that the event position corresponding to a transitive verb such as ‘build’ can be decomposed into two subevents related by causation where e1 is the causing or instigating force and e±2 is the event of house-building (we follow Hale and Keyser’s notation in using! to represent the relationship between the sub- events in (29)).

(29) build (e) where e¼ e1 ! e2: [cause-build(e1) & process-build(e2)] Moreover, we follow Marantz (1984), Kratzer (1996), and others in assuming that the external argument is separable from the verbal root and its internal argument. In particular, we assume that it is introduced by the head that contributes the outer causational or initiational eventuality (see also Doron, this volume and Travis, this volume, for particular versions of this view).

The reasons for this kind of decomposition in both the syntax and the semantics rest on linguistic generalizations concerning morphological rela- tions and argument structure alternations, and this is not the place to rehearse them. However, to the extent that the data from Hindi/Urdu Wts neatly into this schema, it will provide additional empirical justiWcation for the general approach.

The second important relation between events is that of telic augmentation. Once again, following much recent work (see Parsons (1990), Higginbotham (1999), and Rappaport Hovav and Levin (1998) for an analysis in terms of a

diVering kind of lexical decomposition), we assume that accomplishment predicates (in the Vendler (1967) sense) consist of two sub-events of process and telos respectively in their representation. In (30) we show a representation of the sub-events process (e1) and result state (e2) as based on proposals by Higginbotham (1999).11

(30) ‘cross the street’(e) where e¼< e1, e2 >: [process-cross(e1) & result- of-crossing(e2)]

The event pair in angled brackets shown above can be called an ‘accom- plishment event structure’, or a ‘telic pair’. We will follow the convention of using angled brackets when we mean that the event positions in question are related in this very speciWc aspectual way.

A number of further comments are in order. The two relations of causation and telic augmentation are the only primitives of the event combinatorial system which can be used to create complex events of the same logical type. Sub-events themselves are not of a diVerent ontological type from macro events—out of combination they are of the same order as simple processes or states. Consider something like an individual ‘apple’ which can have systematic and relevant subparts (skin, core seeds, etc.) which could be labelled as individuals in their own right; this does not mean that ‘apple’ is anything other than an ordinary individual within the semantics. Similarly, the macro-event corresponding to a predication is just an event which hap- pens to have sub-parts. For some linguistic purposes (anchoring to tense, adverbs, and intersentential eVects) this event is the only event variable manipulated or ‘seen’ by the logical relations. However, the evidence from aspectual semantics and internal morphology of verbs indicates that eventive substructure is linguistically real and follows certain strict syntactic and semantic generalizations.

It is also important to appreciate that unlike previous work in the literature, we are decomposing an event into a maximum of three potential sub-events: causing event (e1), caused process (e2), and caused result state (e3). The full potential decomposition of a lexical accomplishment is in (31). (We assume in addition that a macro-event position e exists which interacts with external processes of modiWcation and tense interpretation and certain higher-level adverbials.)

(31) e: e¼ e1 !< e2, e3 >

6.5.2 A Wrst-phase syntax

Many related proposals exist which seek to correlate the morphosyntax and the semantics of event structure in an intimate way (see Borer 1998; Diesing 1998; Ritter and Rosen 1998; Travis 1994; this volume; Doron, this volume; Erteschik-Shir and Rapoport, this volume). The common idea behind these proposals is that the syntactic projection of arguments is based on event structure. We make a speciWc proposal here in proposing the event structure in (32), where three event projections are necessary to represent all the possible components of the event structure building processes of natural languages. (32)

vP (= AspcP, causing projection) NP3

subj of ‘cause’

subj of ‘cause’ v

v _{VP (= AsppP, process projection)}

V _{RP (= AsprP, result proj)} V NP2 subj of ‘result’ R NP1 √P R . . .

As we see in (32), the verb phrase contains three diVerent projections and each projection is an instantiation of a (possible) sub-part of the whole event, corresponding to the semantic decomposition described above.

. _{vP introduces the causation event and licenses diVerent types of external} argument (‘subject’ of cause).

. _{VP speciWes the nature of the change or process and licenses the entity} undergoing change or process (‘subject’ of process).

. _{RP gives the ‘telos’ or ‘result state’ of the event and licenses the entity that} comes to hold the result state (‘subject’ of result).

For concreteness, we show here how we envisage the semantic interpret- ation of this structure being built up. We take particular nodes in the Wrst phase syntax tree to denote relations between properties of events and prop- erties of events, constructing more and more complex event descriptions.

Under this more ‘constructionist’ view, neither events nor individual entities are arguments of the lexical item itself, but of the predicates introduced by the semantic interpretation of particular categorial nodes; however, like the neo- Davidsonian position, events and individuals are never all co-arguments of the same predicate, and they are discharged in diVerent ways.

In what follows we lay out a kind of post-Davidsonian semantics which interprets the verbal heads of the l-syntax in a regular and systematic way. As discussed above, there are two primitive modes of sub-event composition to create complex events.12

(33) Event Composition Rule I

e_{¼ e1 ! e2 : e consists of two sub-events, e1, e2 such that e1 leads to or} causes e2 (see Hale and Keyser 1993)

(34) Event Composition Rule II

e¼< e1, e2 > : e consists of two sub-events, e1, e2, such that e1 and e2 form an accomplishment event structure where e1 is the process portion and e2 is a state interpreted as the result state of the process. (see Parsons 1990; Higginbotham 1999)

There are a number of general primitive predicates over events correspond- ing to the basic sub-event types:

(35) a. Result(e) : e is a state that a process leads to. b. Process(e): e is a process or transition.

c. Initiation(e): e is an initiational state which causes a process or transition.

Further, the objects of particular event types are interpreted according to the primitive role types deWned as the relations between objects and events below:

(36) a. Subject (x, e) and Initiation(e) entails that x is the Initiator of e. b. Subject (x, e) and Process(e) entails that x is the Undergoer of the

process.

c. Subject (x, e) and Result(e) entails that x is the Holder of the state (Resultee).

12 In Ramchand (2003), these two modes are reduced to one, more abstract causational relation. However, since nothing in our current argument hinges on this, we will stick to the more traditional conception here.

The R head in the Wrst phase syntax is interpreted as building a state description that has a particular ‘holder’ in its speciWer position. Its semantic interpretation is given in (37).

(37) [[R]]¼ lPlxle[P(e) & Result(e) & Subject(x,e)]

When the RP is selected by a process-introducing head, V, the holder of the state is then the holder of a ‘result’. We will label these special types of holders Resultees. The interpretation of the process-introducing head V, is given below. It takes an argument in its speciWer position that is interpreted as the undergoer of the process, and a state description in its complement position that is interpreted as the result state:

(38) [[V]]¼ lPlxle9e1,e2[P(e2) & V’(e1) & Process(e1) & e ¼< e1, e2 > & Subject (x,e1)]

Finally, the highest verbal head, v, is interpreted as an initiating event which leads to the (possibly complex) event constructed by the lower structure that it combines with. The speciWer position of this projection is interpreted as the ’causer’ or Initiator of the sub-event.13

(39) [[v]]_{¼ lPlxle9e1, e2[P(e2) & v’(e1) & Initiation(e1) & e ¼ e1 ! e2} & Subject (x, e1)]

Given the semantics of these various heads, if the heads are not built up in the correct order, the derivation will at best converge as gibberish. Given the existence of this functional sequence, we will assume that the syntactic struc- tures are freely built up by Merge, but that they have to be licensed by the presence of speciWc lexical items. One of the important features of this system is the way in which lexical items attach to this Wrst phase syntax. Crucially, they are not inserted at a single terminal node in the Wrst phase syntax, but simply Merge and project according to their category features. If Merge does not occur to build a functional sequence that is correctly ordered and interpret- able, then the derivation will crash. At the interface, the encyclopedic content of the lexical items is uniWed with the semantic skeleton provided by the combinatoric system. There are dependencies in both directions: the syntactic structure needs to be licensed by explicit content to be interpretable at the

13 The system as described here is very similar in spirit to the constructionalist approach to argument structure also found in Erteschik-Shir and Rapoport (this volume). The Wrst-phase syntax goes along with a predictable compositional semantic interpretation, and arguments are interpreted relative to the sub-events that they specify. More detailed semantic information from the lexical encyclopedic content of the individual verbs is simply uniWed with this more systematic template, according to the constraints of plausibility and real-world knowledge.

interface; the lexical item can only associate with a node that matches the category features it is listed with. The category labels or ‘tags’ on lexical items are the only information we will Wnd necessary to regulate their use, and moreover the minimal nature of the syntactically relevant information they have will be part of the solution to ‘Xexible’ lexical use within a language.14

While the details of the implementation are beyond the scope of this par- ticular paper (see Folli and Ramchand (2002) for a detailed syntactic imple- mentation of lexical selection), the main intuition is the following: if the lexical item is speciWed as having the particular category feature (v, V or R or some combination), the corresponding syntactic structure is licensed; nominal ar- guments are merged in the speciWer positions of licensed projections, and get the interpretation given by the union of the semantic compositional rules and the encyclopedic information carried by the speciWc lexical item.

As we have seen, the speciWer positions are interpreted systematically by the general semantic component as Initiator, Undergoer, and Resultee respect- ively. There are thus no thematic roles, only three universal semantic rules triggered by syntactic structure. One major departure this proposal will make from other systems is that these speciWer positions are not claimed to be mutually exclusive. In other words, it is possible for a single argument to be in more than one of these positions simultaneously (or have them linked together in an A-chain). This means that we are assuming that there is no u-criterion, and that the semantic interpretations of the positions so linked get uniWed. In principle, there is no incompatibility between the semantics of Initiator, Undergoer, Resultee, and so no violations will occur purely because of uniWcation.

With respect to the particulars of the Wrst-phase syntax proposed, the elements of the ontology are those which have proved over the years to be minimally necessary to express the linguistically relevant argument structure and aspectual distinctions found in natural language. Thus, causation has been shown to be a relevant parameter in verbal diVerences, and shows up very

14 Once again, there are aspects of this system that are reminiscent of the principle of Full Interpretation as invoked by Erteschik-Shir and Rapoport (this volume). Their locational or state features correspond to a verb that is speciWed with an R feature, and Manner in their terms is mostly closely associated with the Process node. The diVerences lie in the details of the implementation: the system we follow here uses only syntactic category labels (which are interpreted in particular ways), and does not make use of lexicon-speciWc linguistically relevant features. In addition, the Process head in Ramchand (2003) is already interpreted as a ‘path’, without the addition of a plurality operator, and the point transitions are simply degenerate versions of ‘path’. In Ramchand (2003), a plurality operator over events is not necessary for scalar or degree changes, but only for genuine cases of iterativity and distributivity.

often as overt morphology within the verbal inventory of human languages (cf. Baker 1988; Hale and Keyser 1993; Ritter and Rosen 1998; Rappaport Hovav and Levin 2000; Doron, this volume; Travis, this volume). Telos or resultativ- ity is also a component which has been shown to be isolable as a parameter in verbal meanings, and which has associated morphology and case marking reXexes in various languages (see e.g. Tenny 1994; Kiparsky 1998; van Hout 1996; Ritter and Rosen 1998; Borer 1998). The decomposition proposed here takes those generalizations seriously, and explicitly encodes sub-events to represent each isolable component, each correlated with a functional projec- tion in the ‘Wrst-phase syntax’. The projection VP, corresponding to the process component, is the only one that we consider to be obligatory for all (non-stative) verbs since it represents the concept of change, a crucial com- ponent of any non-stative (in its most degenerate version it can reduce to a single transition, but this for us still counts as change/process). The concept of change in this extremely general sense is a presupposed condition for the concepts both of initiation and of result state.

We exploit these ideas of event structure decomposition and use the Hindi/ Urdu V-V constructions as a test-bed for the formulation proposed here of the syntactic conditions on the ways that event-building can occur in the gram- mar. We believe that causation and telic pair formation are the fundamental semantic combinatorial operations available in the grammars of natural language, and that they are more primitive than other sorts of semantic relationship that can obtain between events. We believe further that the complex predicate data from Hindi/Urdu provides direct justiWcation for the nature of the decomposition proposed here and its relationship to syn- tactic representation. The explicitly constructionalist view taken is also im- portant because only such a view is able to make sense of the event structure Xexibility of lexical items.

6.6 Analysis

6.6.1 The let type: light verb as v

Recall that the ‘let’ type of construction showed syntactic evidence for mono- clausality while still maintaining the two verbs as separable syntactic, seman- tic, and prosodic elements. We therefore cannot assume a direct theta- marking relationship between the event introduced by V1 and that introduced by V2 for these constructions, since that would give rise to two distinct predicational domains. Further, the light verb cannot simply be a traditional kind of auxiliary, because it has an eVect on the argument structure and case marking properties of the clause.

In fact, if we inspect the relevant sentences closely, such as those shown in (40), we can observe a number of interesting semantic characteristics. (40) a. nadya¼ne AnjUm¼ko nKkA l-ne di-ya

Nadya.F¼Erg Anjum. F¼Dat emerge-Inf.Obl give-Perf.M.Sg ‘Nadya let Anjum get out.’

b. AnjU m¼ne sAddAf¼ko xAt lKkh-ne di-ya Anjum.F¼Erg Saddaf. F¼Dat letter.M.Nom write-Inf.Obl give- Perf.M.Sg

‘Anjum let Saddaf write a letter.’

In all these cases, the arguments related to V1 include everything but the subject. The subject, on the other hand, is the external agent or causer of the whole V1 event. Moreover, the speciWc mode of causation (facilitation in the examples above) depends on the speciWc choice of V2.

Hindu/Urdu also possesses explicit morphemes (-a/-va) which indicate general causation. When the V1 verbs in the examples above are causativized using this morpheme, they can give rise to the same argument structure and case-marking pattern as in the light verb constructions: compare (40a) with (41a), and (40b) with (41b).15

(41) a. nadya¼ne AnjUm¼ko nKkal-a

Nadya.F¼Erg Anjum.F¼Acc emerge.Caus-Perf.M.Sg ‘Nadya pulled Anjum out.’

b. AnjUm_{¼ne sAddAf¼ko} xAt lKkh-va-ya

Anjum.F_{¼Erg Saddaf.F¼Acc letter.M.Nom write-Caus-Perf.M.Sg} ‘Anjum had the letter written for Saddaf/taught Saddaf to write the

letter.’

15 With the -va causative it is also possible to have an optional instrumental marked argument, either in addition to the -ko marked argument, as in (ii) below, or instead of it as in (i). This instrumental can be interpreted as a demoted agent.

(i) nadya¼ne (AnjUm¼se) xAt lKkh_-va-ya

Nadya.F_{¼Erg (Anjum.F¼Inst) letter.M.Nom write-Caus-Perf.M.Sg} ‘Nadya had the letter written (by Anjum).’

(ii) nadya_{¼ne AnjUm¼ko (yassin¼se) xAt lKk}h-va-ya

Nadya.F_{¼Erg Anjum.F¼Acc (Yassin.M¼Inst) letter.M.Nom write-Caus-Perf.M.Sg} ‘Nadya had the letter written for Anjum/taught Anjum to write the letter (by Yassin).’ We have nothing to say about these constructions here, beyond noting that the case-marking patterns which parallel the complex predicate can also be found with causatives. See Butt (1998) and Saksena (1980; 1982) for a more detailed discussion of causativization patterns in Hindi/Urdu.

We believe it is no accident that causative semantics is associated with this type of light verb which displays the paradoxical properties we have outlined. If the light verb were actually part of the Wrst-phase syntax (or ‘lexical syntax’ in the Hale and Keyser sense), it would contribute the kind of meaning most commonly found within lexical items. It would show great integrity with the other portions of the Wrst-phase syntax, and aVect the case-marking and argument structure of a single ‘monoclause’. Since it is part of the event structure decomposition of the ‘e’ bound by tense, it will not show the properties of modifying auxiliaries or contribute to ‘external aspect’ (in the Verkuyl (1972) sense); rather, it will contribute to the Aktionsart of the basic verbal event. We predict further that such an element would be distribution- ally and behaviourally distinct from heads that are external to the vP phase (auxiliaries). In addition, given the head-Wnal typological character of this