Download - Department of Linguistics and English Language ...

But in a sentence containing an ippān, a prepositional phrase may intervene between the
verb and the ippān phrase, as is predicted by my analysis.
(525) Jaki ko r-ar lemelm ilowan mweo ippā-n kōrā
mat the.pl.nh 3pl.agr-T(past) fold inside.of the.house with-3s woman
ro.
the.pl.h
'The mats were folded in the house by the women.'
In this respect, Marshallese agent phrases headed by in are quite different from
English by phrases, as illustrated by the following sentences, taken from Collins (2005).
(526) a. The book was written by John and by Bill.
b. By whom was the book given to Mary?
c. The book was given to Mary by the editor.
In English, two by phrases may be coordinated (a), a by phrase may be fronted (b) and the
by phrase need not be adjacent to the verb (c). But the difference between Marshallese
English is explained by the fact that, while in and by are both Voice heads, the English
verb does not incorporate into the Voice head. Instead it stays in the verb phrase.
Therefore, assuming that the VP moves to a position higher than VoiceP, by and the DP
in spec vP are a constituent in English (although they are part of a remnant constituent).
In Marshallese, the verb does incorporate into the Voice head, which means that in and
the DP occupying spec vP are not a constituent to the exclusion of the verb. So by and the
DP are expected to behave like a constituent, whereas in and the DP are not.
5.6 Stative structure
While they have similar syntactic properties, a Marshallese stative sentence with an ippān
or a jān phrase verb different from a passive sentence containing a phrase headed by one
of these two prepositions. First, a stative sentence does not have a VoiceP projection.
227