Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Date of Degree

2012

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Ph.D.

Program

Linguistics

Advisor

Marcel den Dikken

Committee Members

Christina Tortora

William McClure

Thomas Leu

Subject Categories

Linguistics

Abstract

This is a study of the meaning and syntax of non-(lexical)verbal causation. Macroscopically, it examines the preposition 'from' as attested in contexts like "X is/comes from Y". Syntactic diagnostics are applied to formally distinguish the causative from the spatial interpretations of `from'-PPs in Greek, English, Dutch, and German. The syntactic landscape of causative 'from' will turn out to be very minimal with 'from' directly selecting the Cause-DP, in contradistinction to its spatial counterpart, where 'from' always selects for another PP layer. More microscopically then I focus on the causative interpretations only, which are particularly revealing because (i) they give an in-depth view of CAUSE, stripped of all verbal layers--traditionally considered the locus of CAUSE--suggesting that the source of causation in non-(lexical)verbal environments has to be the preposition per se and (ii) they single-handedly provide a rudimentary structure for causation, where 'from' introduces the Cause in its complement and is predicated of the Causee. Finally, with a basic predicational structure in place, I offer a detailed cross-linguistic account for the syntactic mechanism that forces the use of particle verbs in causative 'from'-less environments.

Comments

Digital reproduction from the UMI microform.

Download

Included in

Linguistics Commons

Share

COinS