Aspect and event structure: the morphosyntax of Polish verbs from a cross-linguistic perspective

Thesis

This thesis presents a detailed analysis of Polish verb stems from a cross- linguistic perspective, couched in the framework of Distributed Morphology (Halle and Marantz 1993 et seq.). Polish verbs are decomposed into a number of functional projections responsible for aspect (perfective vs. imperfective) and event structure (simple event vs. complex change of state). The first part of the thesis focuses on the morphosyntax of event structure. Polish is classified as a weak satellite-framed language in a tripartite version of Talmy’s typology (Acedo-Matellán, 2016). Just like Latin and Classical Greek, Polish has resultative prefixes, but no complex AP or PP resultatives. The properties of weak satellite-framed languages are captured by an M-Merger Parameter, which requires a non-branching resultative X/XP to incorporate into the verb at PF (Matushansky, 2006). The second part of the thesis turns to the morphosyntax of aspect, investigating the relationship between verbal affixes and the value of aspect in Polish and other Slavic languages. I discuss and dismiss proposals based on syntactic agreement (Biskup, 2019, 2022) and a semantic mapping from event structure to aspect (Klein, 1995; Ramchand, 2008a; Tatevosov, 2018, 2022). Instead, I develop a novel movement-based analysis, whereby vP-internal prefixes raise to AspP to license perfectivity. Special attention is paid to the function of secondary imperfective morphology, such s the suffix -yw. I argue that there is no such thing as a ‘secondary imperfective operator’ at the level of syntax/semantics, and that the secondary imperfective is a dissociated morpheme in the sense of Embick (1997), inserted only at PF. The emerging picture is consistent with a grammatical architecture in which morphology interprets the output of narrow syntax, but is not fully isomorphic with it. Morphological operations may filter out well-formed syntactic representations or insert morphemes that are absent from narrow syntax and LF.

Authors: Kwapiszewski, A

• DOI: 10.5287/ora-zrqdj2xgb
• Type of award: DPhil
• Level of award: Doctoral
• Awarding institution: University of Oxford
• Language: English
• Keywords: aspect; linguistics; syntax; morphology; Slavic; Distributed Morphology; Polish; Russian; event structure
• Subjects: Linguistics