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Prosodically-conditioned ordering of predicate modifiers in Maori
Jonathan Herd and Christine Pittman University of Toronto
Māori, like other Austronesian languages, contains a large number of unbound predicate modifiers (particles). The problem of how to derive their surface position is a long-standing one for syntacticians working with these languages. In this paper, we reject recent proposals by Pearce (2000), DeLacy (1999) and Rackowski & Travis (2000) that attempt to derive the surface order of these particles in the syntax, and propose an alternative where surface order reflects prosodic requirements. We argue that these requirements are evaluated post-syntactically, and may induce post-syntactic reordering. The relevant particles are italicised in (1-3). They generally exhibit the following properties: Their surface order is a mirror of their structural prominence (assuming the structural hierarchy of adverbs in Cinque (1999)), such that structurally ‘high’ particles (sentential adverbs, emphatics) surface further to the right within the predicate complex than structurally lower elements (manner adverbs). Secondly, these particles typically occur immediately following the predicate. Some authors (Pearce (2000), DeLacy (1999)) have proposed that these facts are derived by iterative head adjunction of the verb on its way to T. As argued in Herd (2002a), however, Māori is a predicate-fronting language, and therefore this strategy is not available. Other attempts to account for these facts within XP-raising frameworks ('intraposition', etc) are problematic for current Minimalist theory, and fail to make the correct predictions for the Māori data. Furthermore, as Bauer (1997) notes, a subgroup of these elements – the 'sentential adverbs' including pea 'perhaps' and koā 'however' – have a different distribution to the other particles. These elements surface to the right of a non-conjoined raised topic (4), the right edge of the initial member of a conjoined topic (5), or – in the absence of any pre-predicate element - as the rightmost member of the particle cluster (3). Other particles remain post-predicate in all clause-types. We propose that a unified account for the data in (1-5) is possible. We propose the following: First, sentential adverbs are merged as the head of ForceP, the leftmost phrase in Rizzi's extended C-system, while all other post-positional particles are merged between v and T. Secondly, all post-positional particles in Māori are clitics (as defined by Klavans (1995)). Evidence for this come from Biggs (1969) and Bauer (1997), who observe that predicate modifying particles in Māori cannot be stressed or be followed by a pause. Furthermore, they are second-position clitics, subject to a requirement that they follow a prosodic word (Inkelas (1989). We follow Halpern (1995) in assuming that this requirement is evaluated post-syntactically. We further follow Halpern's cliticisation procedure, whereby second-position clitics either adjoin to a (homo)clausal prosodic host to their left (where possible), or adjoin to a lower prosodic word host as a last resort. We will show that the latter operation applies to sentential adverbs, while the former applies to the other particles. Briefly, we will explore an idea presented by Adger (unpublished m.s.), where this procedure is instantiated by prosodically-determined insertion contexts of phonological features within a late-insertion view of distributed morphology, rather than by actual post-syntactic movement of syntactic constituents. Since this insertion will apply bottom-up and cyclically, we will show that this correctly derives the mirror image ordering described above.
Examples:
(1) E tupu tonu mai nei anō i te pari o taua whēnua T/A grow cont. hither near1 still acc. the.s. abundance of that land 'because of the abundance of that land, [they] are still growing there' Williams 1985:mai
(2) Kia tae mai pea ia T/A arrive hither perhaps 3p.s. 'I hope she comes' Bauer (1997:330)
(3) E haere tonu mai nei pea (ia) T/A move cont. hither near1 perhaps (3ps) '(he) is perhaps still coming here now' Harlow (1996:12)
(4) Ko te kēhua pea ka mataku i a koe topic the.s. ghost perhaps T/A afraid cause p. you.s. 'Perhaps the ghost will be afraid of you' Bauer (1997:330)
(5) Ko Ponga koā rāua ko Puhihuia i noho kau noa iho topic Ponga however they.dl. topic Puhihuia T/A sit excl. freely down 'Ponga and Puhihuia, however, just sat…' Bauer (1997:331)
References:
Adger, D. unpublished. Interfacing syntax, morphology and prosody: The case of the Old Irish Verb. m.s. Queen Mary, University of London
Bauer, W. 1997. The Reed Reference Grammar of Māori. Auckland: Reed Books
Biggs, B. 1969. Let's Learn Maori: a guide to the study of the Maori language. Wellington: Reed Books
Cinque, G. 1999. Adverbs and Functional Heads: A cross-linguistic perspective. New York: Oxford University Press
DeLacy, P. 1999. Predicate nominals in Maori. m.s. MIT, Cambridge, MA.
Halpern, A. 1995. On the placement and morphology of clitics. Stanford: CSLI Publications
Herd, J. 2002a. Deriving the Māori clause: a predicate-fronting analysis. MA Thesis. University of Toronto
Klavans, J. 1995. On clitics and cliticization. New York: Garland Publishing
Pearce, E. 2000. Argument positions and anaphora in the Maori clause. In Steven Fisher and Wolfgang Sperlich (eds.) LEO PASIFIKA: proceedings of the fourth international conference on Oceanic Linguistics. Auckland: The Institute of Polynesian Languages and Literatures, Monograph Series, Vol. 2, pp. 313-325
Rackowski, A. & Travis, L. 2000. V-Initial languages: X or XP movement and adverbial placement. In A. Carnie and E. Guilfoyle (eds.) The Syntax of Verb Initial Languages. New York: Oxford University Press. pp.117-142
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