Butterpillar or Caterfly?

1
Butterpillar or Caterfly?

• The Bangla Passive in a Minimalist Parser
• Tanmoy Bhattacharya
• Department of Linguistics
• University of Delhi
• tanmoy_at_linguistics.du.ac.in

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What is the talk about

• Passive template historically is a result of a
  certain tension within the body of the clause
• Incorporation, verb-shell, smuggling, of PP
  can capture the tension
• Invites treatment in a Minimalist Parser
• Importing syntactic analysis as it is does not
  work

3
The Place of Passive in the PP Frameworks

• Later GB severance between the active and the
  passive form ?
• Different derivational histories
• Misses the generalization about how we think of
  passives ?not out of the blue
• Passive is more surfacey
• Can we capture this in Minimalism?

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Evaluation Matrix and the Passive

• Evaluation matrix (EM) is a collection of Economy
  Principles (Last Resort, Least Effort,
  Procrastinate, etc.)
• Evaluation is of only convergent derivations
• Passive and Active are comparable, passive wins
  out later, iff speakers intention had
  dethematicization of subject
• Passive/ active are one until EM acts

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The Passive in Bangla

• Very prolific
• Analytic Passive pass pplaux v
• a. ama-ke dEkha jay
• me-dat seen goes
• b. dEkha jay (impersonal)
• Agent, if expressed, is marked by a P
• jim dara bagh-Ta mar-a gEche
• Jim by tiger-cla kill-pass go.ppl.3
• The tiger has been killed by Jim.

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Idiomatic Passive forms
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The Revised Passive Template

• GEN subject
• ama-r dara bagh mar-a hObe
• I-gen by tiger kill-pass be.fut
• Tiger will be killed by me.
• Revised Passive template
• (NP-gen by) NP V-a be V

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Similarity with the Gerund

• Gerunds have GEN subject too
• ama-r boi pOR-a
• I-gen book read-ger
• my reading book.
• The P dara in passive can be dropped
• amar kOfi ken-a holo
• I-gen book read-pass became
• Coffee was bought by me.
• Norwegian
• Det vart kjøpte kaffe
• it became bought coffee
• There was bought coffee. (Åfarli 1992)

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LR Parsing and the Passive-Gerund Ambiguity

• (1) a. (jOn dara) boi pORa hoeche
• J-(gen) by book read.pass be.ppl.3
• b. joner boi pORa hoeche
• .gen book read.pass be.ppl.3
• the book has been read by J.
• The VPs are identical
• Difference (i) Non-optionality of the subject
  (of the DP)in (b), and (ii) GEN on the subject in
  (b)
• GEN cased DP cant be recovered

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First Parse of the Gerund/Passive

• (A) If GEN, mark a on V as GER
• Parsing Question How is the next V analysed?
• (a) If zero N, select T and check NOM on N
• (b) When V is scanned, -a triggers a PASS vP
• (c) PASS selects an unaccusative VP
• Rule If 2 NPs, the V is not PASS, or if (A),
  then??
• (d) GEN triggers (i) POSS DP, or (ii) GER
• (e) If the next V is a, (i) is rejected, parser
  backtracks to (ii)
• (f) When another V, (ii) is also rejected ??

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How to Recover the POSS DP

• PASS with POSS DP
• joner bagh mara gEche
• John.gen tiger killed go.ppl.3
• Johns tiger has been killed.

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Algorithm for both Types of Light Verbs

• i. joner bagh
• ii. mara
• A ger expects N/ø and main V
• B pass expects LV
• iii gEche C rejects (iiA)
• D proceeds as pass
• OR,If
• iii. hoeche
• then apply R1
• R1 NPgen a-gt no pass
• iv. reject (iiB) ? ger tree projected

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Algorithm for POSS DP

• But still no POSS DP parse!
• ii. mara
• A as before
• B1joner bagh ø mara
• B2 joner baghdat mara
• iii. gEche
• C rejects (iiA)
• D proceeds with B
• d1 rejects B1, apply R2 gEche takes nom
• d2 accept B2
• OR
• iii. hoeche
• E accept A ? generates poss tree
• F reject B

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Algorithm for the PASS Parse

• For this, we need yet another rule
• Rule 3 ho can take NP-nom at Spec,T and NP-dat
  at Spec,v
• Now, step (iii) above becomes
• (iii) hoeche
• E accepts A ? ger
• F rejects B1
• G accepts B2 ? apply R3? pass (23b)
• We needed 3 ad hoc rules (Rule 1-3) to resolve
  the passive/ gerund ambiguity

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Butterpillar/ Caterfly

• Trapped energy, caterpillar waiting to burst into
  a butterfly (C?B)
• Opposite view butterfly shrinking to a
  caterpillar (B?C)
• Both possibilities in Passive
• Clipping the wings of EA (B?C)
• History and synchrony (C?B)

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History of the Bangla Passive

• -a lt denominative aya
• Obscured by causative aw
• a. daMR stick gt daMRay stands
• b. tOl bottom gt tOlay goes to the bottom
• Distinction between DENOM and CAUS is lost
• ? Verbalise (N?V) C ?B
• Both find syntactic analogues
• incorporation (shelf ? shelve)
• V ? v
• feed (example par excellence)

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History of the Passive Agent

• NCase P
• Loss of Case in MIA ? NAff PCase
• Skt extended P-use to verbal forms (pass ppl, prs
  ppl) influenced by Dravidian (IE regarding,
  during, concerning)
• a. kore having done
• b. diye having given
• c. dara inst of dvar through the
  instrumentality of
• PV (a and b) PN (c) B?C

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Syntax of the Caterfly Effect

• Surfacing of v Bypassing v
• Collins (2005) Smuggling
• VoiceP
• 2
• 2
• voice vP
• 2
• PP 2
• v ltPartPgt

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Smuggling in Bangla

• TP
• 2
• 2
• VcP T
• 2
• 2
• vP Vc
• 2
• amar dara 2
• PrtP v
• 2 hoeche
• VP Prt
• 2 -a
• boi V
• pOR-
•  

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Minimalist Parser and Minimalism

• Similarity Incremental Processing
• Differences with Minimalism
• Unavailability of Lexical Array (LA)
• No place for Merge/ Move in a LR parser since
  they are bottom up ETs are the alternatives to
  them
• Move Box to capture effects of ?-theory
• Probe Box to capture Case and PIC

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Lexicon of a MP

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Elementary Trees
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Move Box and Probe ox

• Move Box Preference Rule
• When filling open positions, always prefer the
  Move Box over the input
• Elements involving Agree are picked from the
• most current Probe stored in the Probe Box
• Agree(p,g) if
• a. Match(p,g) holds. Then
• b. Value(p,g) for matching features
• c. Value(p,g) for property value(f)

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Parse

• a. Given a category X, pick an ET headed by X
• b. From the Move Box or input
• i. Fill in the Spec
• ii. Run Agree(p,g) if both p,g are non-empty
• ii. Fill in the Head
• iv. Copy h to Probe Box if h is a probe
• iii. Fill in the complement by recursively
  calling parse with X where X has lexical
  property select(X)

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Smuggling in a Minimalist Parser?
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Failure of Pass Parse with/ without Smuggling

• Agree(T,Spec-Vc) will not take whole PRT, but
  only the Obj
• Obj wrongly valued nom
• If Obj moves alone, again Agree will value Case
  as nom, wrongly
• Movement of Obj not possible
• Vc is not required

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Conclusions

• A Minimalist Parsing algorithm cannot mimic
  syntactic object movement outside the VP shell
• Voice Phrase is unnecessary
• Probe-Goal Syntax in Minimalist Inquiries finds
  support from the Parser
• Movement to any higher functional position (Agro)
  is unimplementable