From: rwojcik@atc.boeing.com (Richard Wojcik,snake)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: SVO / VSO
Date: 6 Oct 92 20:25:55 GMT
Reply-To: rwojcik@atc.boeing.com
Organization: Research & Technology

From pesetsk@athena.mit.edu (David M Pesetsky)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: SVO / VSO
Date: 2 Oct 92 15:41:40 GMT

The question of VSO structure has long been a pet interest of mine.  When
generative semanticists ruled the land many years ago, the idea was to make
syntactic structure look more like first-order logic, which doesn't have VPs.
So the existence of VPs was a kind of embarrassment, and McCawley's famous
paper was an effort to rationalize syntax in that framework.  Now we live in
an era where syntacticians get embarrassed when there is no VP, and we seem to
have an equally well-motivated drive to "explain" VSO languages.  The
problem is that Welsh and Irish, two important languages to the rationalizers,
tend to like AUX-S-V-O word orders.  So it seemed very elegant to slide the
tensed element to the left of the subject, producing a very common Celtic
periphrastic structure.  My objection to this was that Breton has eschewed the
more common Celtic structure (except for progressive expressions) in favor of
a French-like auxiliary system.  The structure of the Breton auxiliary system
is to have, at most, two auxiliaries preceding the main verb.  Follow that
with the subject, and you get AUX(tns)-AUX(part)-V-NP(subj)-NP(obj) as a kind
of maximal expansion of the clause.  The periphrastic structure, which GB
syntacticians pointedly acknowledge in Welsh and Irish, clings only to a tiny
corner of the Breton verbal system--the progressive auxiliary-verb sequence
that French had no morphological leverage on.  French lacks a morphological
analog to English and Celtic progressive structures, and so Breton has Welsh-
like AUX-S-V-O structure there.

David Pesetsky correctly notes that GBers can probably still explain Breton,
and I certainly don't deny that.  Perhaps you could argue for some kind of
pied-piping effect in Breton, where the tensed Aux drags the rest of the verb
behind it.  My objection is that you lose most of the theoretical elegance
that you gained with Sproat's original analysis.  Worse yet, I don't think
that Breton copular sentences (or most copular sentence structure in VSO
languages) can be explained easily in the GB analysis or any lexically-based syntax.
The problem is plainly that predicate AP/NPs behave like main verbs in Breton.
They appear to the left of the subject.  And they are subject to a unique
Breton movement rule that only main verbs can undergo (what Chung and others
have mistakenly called "verb topicalization").  Explaining copular sentence
structure is, in my mind, the biggest challenge facing modern syntacticians, 
especially GBers.

[David Pesetsky (DP) writes]

DP> Are you quite sure?  Supposing this is right, perhaps the predicate
DP> moves to a null copular verb, which then raises.  I don't know; this is an
DP> interesting question.  No Celtic specialist I, I can be fairly sure that
DP> Jim McCloskey has said something about this, perhaps in one of his
DP> papers. Whether it's a real problem or not, I can't say.  Anyone know
DP> something about the matter?

I'm quite sure.  You can look at my 1976 paper in CLS 12 for the relevant
data.  BTW, the copula is not null in Breton.  Thus, you get BE-PRED-SUBJ
order:  
      N'eo ket brao an amzer  "The weather isn't nice"
        is not nice the weather

Welsh and Irish copular sentences have a periphrastic BE-SUBJ-PRED order.

DP> Can't we try to acknowledge that serious work does not solve every
DP> problem at once without raising accusations of "ignoring"
DP> problems, "gross embarassment" and insinuations of foul intent?  That's
DP> just not how things are. Please, you figure out how Breton argues
DP> against, say, McCloskey's analysis of Irish VSO, and write a paper.  It
DP> will be a contribution to the debate.

Well, I've got some prior claim on this territory, since my work seems to
predate all the papers mentioned.  I have another paper on the subject in NELS
VI, 1976.  None of the participants in the GB articles seem to have taken more
than a cursory look at Breton.  (BTW, I've sent a copy of my unpublished
critique of Sproat to David, and I'll be happy to send my email version to
anyone who has a serious interest in the subject.)  I don't claim "foul
intent" here, but I think that the existence of VSO structure is at least as
embarrassing for GB as VPs were for generative semanticists.  What goes around
comes around.  I used the loaded term "gross embarrassment" because I think
that the implications here are more than a little serious for any theory that
needs underlying VPs.  But I certainly acknowledge David's point that serious
work does not solve every problem at once.  It certainly should, however, take
serious problems seriously.  

BTW, I don't deny many of the facts established by folks who have identified
command asymmetries in Breton.  I'm only saying that basic clause structure is
more than a little strange for the GB framework.  I think that GB work on 
command asymmetries in Breton ought to at least footnote the problem.  They 
don't necessarily have to wear a "gross embarrassment" sign.  I was just
kidding about that.  :-)

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Disclaimer:  Opinions expressed above are not those of my employer.

    Rick Wojcik   (rwojcik@atc.boeing.com)   Seattle, WA