Eva Klingvall On non-copula Tough Constructions in Swedish (PDF ...

More documents

Recommendations

Info

1463.2 GåIn section 2.3 above, we saw that gå differs from vara in that it can’t beomitted under an ECM-verb:(32) a. Böckernab. * JagIbooks-DEFgårgotrögt att läsa.slowly to read‘The books read slowly.’anser böckerna trögt att läsa.consider books-DEF slowly to readThese examples show that the adverb and the infinitival clause do not forma small clause predicate. I take this as evidence that gå is unlike vara in notbeing a copula verb.Gå appears in a number of different structures and can be either a lexicalor a functional verb. As a lexical verb, it is a verb of motion with an Agentsubject and, typically, a complement in the form of a PP (location or direction)or a DP (a type of cognate object):(33) a. Anna gick till affären.Anna went to shop-DEF‘Anna went to the shop.’b. Anna gick en promenad.Anna went a walk‘Anna took a walk.’Gå can also be a functional verb taking an abstract PP as complement (seeEkberg, 1989):(34) a. Anna gick till anfall.Anna went to attack‘Anna made an attack.’b. Mannenman-DEFgick i exil.went in exile‘The man went into exile.’On this functional use, which I will refer to as the light-verb use, the verbdoes not mean ‘walk’ in the literal sense. Although the motion semantics is
147no longer concrete, it is retained in some bleached form. In examples likethe ones in (34a)–(34b), the verb still implies dynamicity. Ekberg argues thatthe verb is specified as [+intention] and can only combine with complementsspecified in the same way.As we know, gå can also appear with an infinitival complement. The infinitivalclause can, but need not, be preceded by an adverb, as illustrated in thefollowing go-TC and its adverb-less counterpart:(35) a. Bokenbook-DEFgår lätt att läsa.goes easily to read‘The book reads easily.’b. Bokenbook-DEFgår att läsa.goes to read‘The book can be read.’Recall from section 2.5 that two readings can arise in the absence of an adverb:either the sentence says that it is possible, as opposed to not possible, to readthe book, or the sentence is interpreted as including a null version of lätt andthus have the standard reading. In the former case, gå has a modal (epistemic)reading. I leave the modal use of the verb aside for the moment but willreturn to it briefly in section 4. Gå in (35a) differs from the light-verb use in(34a)–(34b) above in not appearing with an Agent subject, but instead withan underlying object. Therefore, if the verb in the go-TC comes with thefeature specification [+intention], this meaning component is not associatedwith the subject, but, if anything, with an implicit argument, similarly to thepassive. Despite the differences regarding their subjects, light-verb gå and gåin go-TCs are similar in their requirements on the complement: both combineonly with agentive complements, as discussed above and in section 2.2. 9 Thesame thing holds in another construction with gå that resembles the go-TC in9A possible analysis of light-verb constructions like the ones in (34a)–(34b) is that gå is acontrol verb selecting a small clause complement consisting of the PP and a PRO subject. Apiece of evidence in favour of an analysis involving control, rather than raising, is the fact thatlight-verb gå cannot take an expletive subject. This could be taken to mean that gå assigns athematic role to its subject. See section 3.4 for control properties of go-TCs.
Page 1: On non-copula Tough Constructions i
Page 5 and 6: 135the constructions, and what embe
Page 7 and 8: 137and Fiengo, 1974). Lätt (‘eas
Page 9 and 10: 1392.2 The embedded verb and its ar
Page 11 and 12: 141general phonologically null Pred
Page 13 and 14: 1432.6 SummaryAlthough both TCs and
Page 15: 145Syntactically, the adjective is
Page 19 and 20: 149read, not that it is fun to read
Page 21 and 22: 151as will be shown in the next sec
Page 23 and 24: 153c. * Boken ibook i -DEF[utan[wit
Page 25 and 26: 155b. ?? Per går lätt PRO Exp att
Page 27 and 28: 157(53) v’vVPuφVDPiφ,uCase,uWHD
Page 29 and 30: 159(56) Derivation of the TCTPDP jT
Page 31 and 32: 161(58) a. Artikelnpaper-DEFärisl
Page 33 and 34: 163is easy to read, in which case i
Page 35 and 36: 165Chomsky, Noam. 1981. Lectures on
Page 37: 167Rothstein, Susan. 1999. Fine-gra

Eva Klingvall On non-copula Tough Constructions in Swedish (PDF ...

Create successful ePaper yourself

Delete template?

Save as template?