The grammar of hitting , breaking and cutting in Kimaragang Dusun

The hit, break and cut classes of verbs are grammatically relevant in Kimaragang, as in English. The relevance of such classes for determining how arguments are expressed suggests that the meaning of a verb is composed of (a) systematic components of meaning (the EVENT TEMPLATE); and (b) idiosyncratic properties of the individual root. Assuming this approach to be essentially correct, we compare grammatical phenomena in Kimaragang which are sensitive to verb class membership with phenomena which are not class-sensitive. The tendency that emerges is that class-sensitive alternations do not seem to be affix-dependent, and are quite restricted in their ability to introduce new arguments into the argument structure. 1. Verbs of hitting and breaking in English This paper discusses the relationship between verbal semantics and clause structure in Kimaragang Dusun, an endangered Philippine-type language of northern Borneo. It builds on a classic paper by Charles Fillmore (1970), in which he distinguishes two classes of transitive verbs in English: “surface contact” verbs (e.g., hit, slap, strike, bump, stroke) vs. “change of state” verbs (e.g., break, bend, fold, shatter, crack). Fillmore shows that the members of each class share certain syntactic and semantic properties which distinguish them from members of the other class. He further argues that the correlation between these syntactic and semantic properties supports a view of lexical semantics under which the meaning of a verb is made up of two kinds of elements: (a) systematic components of meaning that are shared by an entire class; and (b) idiosyncratic components that are specific to the individual root. Only the former are assumed to be “grammatically relevant.” This basic insight has been foundational for a large body of subsequent work in the area of lexical semantics. One syntactic test that distinguishes hit verbs from break verbs in English is the “causative alternation”, which is systematically possible with break verbs (John broke the window vs. The 1 I would like to thank Jim Johansson, Farrell Ackerman and John Beavers for helpful discussion of these issues. Thanks also to Jim Johansson for giving me access to his field dictionary (Johansson, n.d.), the source of many of the Kimaragang examples in this paper. Special thanks are due to my primary language consultant, Janama Lantubon. Part of the research for this study was supported by NEH-NSF Documenting Endangered Languages fellowship no. FN-50027-07. The grammar of hitting, breaking and cutting in Kimaragang Dusun 2 window broke) but systematically impossible with hit verbs (John hit the window vs. *The window hit). A second test involves a kind of “possessor ascension”, a paraphrase in which the possessor of a body-part noun can be expressed as direct object. This paraphrase is grammatical with hit verbs (I hit his leg vs. I hit him on the leg) but not with break verbs (I broke his leg vs. *I broke him on the leg). A third diagnostic relates to the potential ambiguity of the passive participle. Participles of both classes take a verbal-eventive reading; but participles of break verbs also allow an adjectival-stative reading (the window is still broken) which is unavailable for participles of hit verbs (*the window is still hit). Semantically, the crucial difference between the two classes is that break verbs entail a result, specifically a “separation in [the] material integrity” of the patient (Hale and Keyser 1987). This entailment cannot be cancelled (e.g., I broke the window with a hammer; #it didn’t faze the window, but the hammer shattered). The hit verbs, in contrast, do not have this entailment (I hit the window with a hammer; it didn’t faze the window, but the hammer shattered). A second difference is that break verbs may impose selectional restrictions based on physical properties of the object (I {folded/?bent/ *broke/*shattered} the blanket) whereas hit verbs do not (I {hit/slapped/struck/beat} the blanket). Selectional restrictions of hit verbs are more likely to be based on physical properties of the instrument. In the years since 1970, these two classes of verbs have continued to be studied and discussed in numerous publications. Additional diagnostics have been identified, including the with/against alternation (examples 1–2; cf. Fillmore 1977:75); the CONATIVE alternation (Mary hit/broke the piñata vs. Mary hit/*broke at the piñata; Guerssel et al. 1985); and the Middle alternation (This glass breaks/*hits easily; Fillmore 1977, Hale and Keyser 1987). These tests and others are summarized in Levin (1993). (1) a. I hit the fence with the stick. b. I hit the stick against the fence. (2) a. I broke the window with the stick. b. #I broke the stick against the window. (not the same meaning!!) Another verb class that has received considerable attention in recent years is the cut class (e.g., Guerssel et al. 1985, Bohnemeyer 2007, Asifa et al. 2007). In this paper I will show that these same three classes (hit, break, cut) are distinguished by a number of grammatical and semantic properties in Kimaragang as well. Section 2 briefly introduces some of the basic assumptions that we will adopt about the structure of verb meanings. Section 3 discusses criteria that distinguish hit verbs from break verbs, and section 4 discusses the properties of the cut verbs. Section 5 introduces another test, which I refer to as the instrumental alternation, which exhibits a different pattern for each of the three classes. Section 6 discusses the tests themselves, trying to identify characteristic properties of the constructions that are sensitive to verb classes, and which distinguish these constructions from those that are not class-sensitive. 2. What do verb classes tell us? Fillmore‟s approach to the study of verb meanings has inspired a large volume of subsequent research; see for example Levin (1993), Levin and Rappaport Hovav (1995, 1998, 2005; henceforth L&RH), and references cited in those works. Much of this research is concerned with exploring the following hypotheses, which were already at least partially articulated in Fillmore (1970): The grammar of hitting, breaking and cutting in Kimaragang Dusun 3 a. Verb meanings are composed of two kinds of information. Some components of meaning are systematic, forming a kind of “event template”, while others are idiosyncratic, specific to that particular root. b. Only systematic components of meaning are “grammatically relevant”, more specifically, relevant to argument realization. c. Grammatically determined verb classes are sets of verbs that share the same template. The systematic aspects of meaning distinguish one class from another, while roots belonging to the same class are distinguished by features of their idiosyncratic meaning. Levin (1993) states: “[T]here is a sense in which the notion of verb class is an artificial construct. Verb classes arise because a set of verbs with one or more shared meaning components show similar behavior... The important theoretical construct is the meaning component, not the verb class...” Identifying semantically determined sets of verbs is thus a first step in understanding what elements of meaning are relevant for determining how arguments will be expressed. Notice that the three prototypical verbs under consideration here (hit, beak, cut) are all transitive verbs, and all three select the same set of semantic roles: agent, patient, plus optional instrument. Thus the event template that defines each class, and allows us to account for the grammatical differences summarized above, must be more than a simple list of semantic roles. In addition to identifying grammatically relevant components of meaning, the study of verb classes is important as a means of addressing the following questions: (a) What is the nature of the “event template”, and how should it be represented? and (b) What morpho-syntactic processes or constructions are valid tests for “grammatical relevance” in the sense intended above? Clearly these three issues are closely inter-related, and cannot be fully addressed in isolation from each other. However, in this paper I will focus primarily on the third question, which I will re-state in the following way: What kinds of grammatical constructions or tests are relevant for identifying semantically-based verb classes? 3. Verbs of hitting and breaking in Kimaragang 3.1 Causative-inchoative alternation Kimaragang is structurally very similar to the languages of the central Philippines. In particular, Kimaragang exhibits the rich Philippine-type voice system in which the semantic role of the subject (i.e., the NP marked for nominative case) is indicated by the voice affixation of the verb. 2 In the Active Voice, an additional “transitivity” prefix occurs on transitive verbs; this prefix is lacking on intransitive verbs. 3 Many verbal roots occur in both transitive and intransitive forms, as illustrated in (3) with the root patay „die; kill‟. In the most productive pattern, and the one of interest to us here, the intransitive form has an inchoative (change of state) meaning while the transitive form has a causative meaning. However, it is important to note that there is no causative morpheme present in these forms (morphological causatives are marked by a different prefix, po-, as discussed in section 6.1). 2 See Kroeger (2005) for a more detailed summary with examples. 3 For details see Kroeger (1996); Kroeger & Johansson (2005). The grammar of hitting, breaking and cutting in Kimaragang Dusun 4 (3) a. Minamatay(<in>m-poN-patay) oku do tasu. 4 <PST>AV-TR-die 1sg.NOM ACC dog „I killed a dog.‟ b. Minatay(<in>m-patay) it tasu. <PST>AV-die NOM dog „The dog died.‟ Virtually all break-type roots allow both the causative and inchoative forms, as illustrated in (6– 7); but hit-type roots generally occur only in the transitive form. Thus just as in English, the causative alternation is highly productive with