{"title":"Microvariation in verbal rather","authors":"Jim Wood","doi":"10.1075/lv.22026.woo","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"\n This paper uses survey results to analyze patterns of judgments across different versions of the non-standard\n verbal use of the word rather, which can take participial morphology, as in rathered. Across\n numerous possible instantiations of the construction, there appear to be in fact a quite limited number of grammars, which are\n generated by an implicational hierarchy of functional heads, along with the availability of a silent verb have. The\n overall picture supports several broader conclusions. First, bare-infinitive–selecting verbs are nearly “closed class” because\n they have special syntactic properties that go beyond semantic or even syntactic selection: they must value the temporal verbal\n features of the embedded verb, or else provide a structural context for such valuation. Second, silent verbs can be licensed by\n head-moving to a modal head in the extended projection. This movement is freely available, but silence demands recoverability,\n which limits its application only to certain verbs, and certain uses/meanings of those verbs. Third, in addition to previously\n known configurations for building parasitic participle constructions, movement of a lower verb to a higher verb can extend the\n phase of the lower verb and lead to its silence. Fourth, the distribution of rather suggests that volitional\n meaning is not a primitive, but is constructed from smaller primitives. Finally, microvariation reveals a tight connection among\n logically distinct functional heads, suggesting that they are not acquired independently of each other, but interact in\n significant ways.","PeriodicalId":53947,"journal":{"name":"Linguistic Variation","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3000,"publicationDate":"2024-03-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Linguistic Variation","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1075/lv.22026.woo","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"0","JCRName":"LANGUAGE & LINGUISTICS","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
This paper uses survey results to analyze patterns of judgments across different versions of the non-standard
verbal use of the word rather, which can take participial morphology, as in rathered. Across
numerous possible instantiations of the construction, there appear to be in fact a quite limited number of grammars, which are
generated by an implicational hierarchy of functional heads, along with the availability of a silent verb have. The
overall picture supports several broader conclusions. First, bare-infinitive–selecting verbs are nearly “closed class” because
they have special syntactic properties that go beyond semantic or even syntactic selection: they must value the temporal verbal
features of the embedded verb, or else provide a structural context for such valuation. Second, silent verbs can be licensed by
head-moving to a modal head in the extended projection. This movement is freely available, but silence demands recoverability,
which limits its application only to certain verbs, and certain uses/meanings of those verbs. Third, in addition to previously
known configurations for building parasitic participle constructions, movement of a lower verb to a higher verb can extend the
phase of the lower verb and lead to its silence. Fourth, the distribution of rather suggests that volitional
meaning is not a primitive, but is constructed from smaller primitives. Finally, microvariation reveals a tight connection among
logically distinct functional heads, suggesting that they are not acquired independently of each other, but interact in
significant ways.
期刊介绍:
Linguistic Variation is an international, peer-reviewed journal that focuses on the study of linguistic variation. It seeks to investigate to what extent the study of linguistic variation can shed light on the broader issue of language-particular versus language-universal properties, on the interaction between what is fixed and necessary on the one hand and what is variable and contingent on the other. This enterprise involves properly defining and delineating the notion of linguistic variation by identifying loci of variation. What are the variable properties of natural language and what is its invariant core?