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SUMMARY:Internal arguments disguised as external arguments: Lessons from a
 n active alignment system - Dr Matthew Tyler (University of Cambridge)
DTSTART:20210311T164500Z
DTEND:20210311T180000Z
UID:TALK157228@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Tim Laméris
DESCRIPTION:"REGISTER HERE":https://forms.gle/ofRcLr4aBxyZh7yP6\n\n*ABSTRA
 CT*\n\nActive alignment describes a morphological alignment pattern where 
 the lone argument of an intransitive verb is marked sometimes like the sub
 ject of a transitive verb\, and sometimes like the object. Many generative
  accounts of active alignment hold that this morphological distinction is 
 rooted in the syntactic distinction between external arguments\, merged as
  the specifier of a functional head Voice (or _v_)\, and internal argument
 s\, merged as an argument of the lexical verb. However\, on the basis of n
 ovel fieldwork with Choctaw\, a language with an active agreement system\,
  I show that an argument’s morphological marking must be dissociated fro
 m its syntactic position: the marking that is characteristic of canonical 
 external arguments is\, exceptionally\, found with certain _internal_ argu
 ments too. Nevertheless\, I show that these internal arguments receive the
 ir exceptional marking only if they can form an uninterrupted syntactic (i
 .e. Agree/case-assignment) relation with the Voice head.\n \n\nThe implica
 tions of these findings are twofold. Firstly\, active alignment is argued 
 to be a consequence of Voice forming a syntactic relation with some argume
 nts and not with others\, rather than a direct consequence of the differin
 g syntactic positions of internal vs. external arguments. This provides a 
 new way of understanding lexical and configurational exceptions to the dom
 inant alignment pattern of a language. Secondly\, by studying the particul
 ar circumstances under which internal arguments receive exceptional markin
 g\, I argue that the agreement/case-assignment properties of a single Voic
 e head can vary _contextually_ according to the syntactic material in its 
 immediate neighborhood\, including the lexical root and other functional h
 eads. This brings the agreement/case-assignment properties of functional h
 eads in line with how we often think about their morphological properties:
  that is\, they can have default and contextually-conditioned variants.
LOCATION:Online
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