Participles in a cross-linguistic perspective Bj¨orn Lundquist May 2009
1
Aims 1. Define “participle”. 2. Give a basic sketch of how participles can differ cross-linguistically. 3. Show why deep studies of individual languages are necessary to capture the behavior (syntactic and semantic) of participles cross-linguistically.
2 (1)
What is a participle Participle: ‘a word derived from a verb and used as an adjective’ (from Crystal 1991)
i.e., an adjective derived from a verb. Something that resembles participles can probably be found in languages all around the world, though the term is most frequently found in discussions concerning Indo-European languages, Finno-Ugric languages and Semitic Languages. They are harder to find in Native American Languages, which sometimes are said to have no non-finite verb forms at all
2.1
Adjectival distribution and morphology:
Adjectival morphology: In general: If the adjective shows gender, number and case agreement in a given language- so does the participle: (2)
a.
b.
(3)
a.
El hombre es querido por sus padres/alto def man is.3.sg loved.m.sing by his parents/tallm.sing ‘He’s loved by his parents/tall’ Las chicas son queridas por sus padres/altas def girls is.3.sg loved.fem.plur by their parents/tall.fem.plur ‘The girls are loved by their parents/tall’ pitk¨a /sy¨o-ve mies tall.masc.nom.sg/ eat-ptcp.masc.nom.sg man.sc sg ‘a tall/eating man’ 1
2
Participles b.
pitk¨a-t/ sy¨o-ve-t miehet tall.masc.nom-pl/ eat-ptcp.masc.nom-pl manpl ‘tall/eating men’ (i.e., ‘the men who are eating’)
Syntax: Adnominal modifier in (3) and (4), or in the complement of a copula (2): (4)
a. b. c.
d.
The book given to Peter A man proud of his son The smiling man The happy man het naar de boot gezwommen meisje the to the boat swimpassptcl girl ‘The girl that has swam to the boat’ (Dutch, form Marlene Van de Vate) ten cigaret-u kou˘r-´i-´a mu˘z the cigarette-ACC smoke-th-part man ‘The man smoking a cigarette’ (Czech, ex. from Pavel Caha, p.c.)
Participles in the complement of copulas form complex tenses. Cross-linguistically, participles are more reluctant to appear in the complement of copulas than other adjectives: Observation 1: If there is a simplex tense form that has the same tense/voice interpretation as a participle in the complement of a copula is expected to have, the complex copula + participle sequence is in general not grammatical: English: (5)
a. the wall surrounding the house b. *The wall is surrounding the house c. The wall surrounds the house
Swedish: (6)
a.
den springande mannen def run.pres.part man.def ‘The running man’ b. *Mannen a¨r springande man.def is run.pres.part int. “The man is running” c. Mannen springer man.def run.pres ‘The man is running’
2.2
Reduced relative clauses?
Pre-nominal participle clauses have often been called reduced relative clauses: (7)
a. b.
the present given to John - the present that was given to John the book lying on the sofa - the book that is lying on the sofa
Cross-linguistically
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However, we don’t have any good understanding of the difference between reduced relative clauses and attributive modifiers. We can’t state the difference between them in terms of position (i.e., post- or pre-nominal placement). English: Left-headed modifiers must always be placed post-nominally: (8)
a man proud of his son - *a proud of his son man
Simplex (i.e., potentially right-headed) participles appear pre-nominally, and get “verbal” interpretations: (9)
the sinking ship - the ship that is sinking
Participles however tend to attach outside most other adjectives in the noun-phrase (see e.g. Scott 2002 and work by Cinque on how to derive differences in orders of adjectives). Further, in many cases the “reduced” relative clause doesn’t have any non-reduced equivalents: English: (10)
a. The wall surrounding the house was never torn down b. *The wall that is/was surrounding the house was never torn down
Russian (Yulia Rodina and Eugenia Romanova, p.c.): (11)
Rebenok, spja˘s˘cij v svoej krovatke, vyzyvaet umilenie. child sleep.pres.part in self bed causes melting ‘The child sleeping in his bed makes one melt’
(12)
spja˘s˘cij rebenok sleep.pres.part child ‘Sleeping child’
(13)
*Rebenok byl spja˘s˘cij (v svoej krovatke). child was sleep.pres.part (in self bed). int. ‘The child was sleeping (in his bed).’
Observation 2: You reach no insight by treating adnominal participial attributive modifiers as qualitatively different from adjectival attributive modifiers.
2.3
Verbal interpretation and internal syntax
Participles however typically keep the semantics and the internal syntax of the verb: Most notably, they tend to denote events rather then properties, and they further keep the internal syntax of the verbs (as seen in accusative/structural case for internal arguments). (14)
a.
The man offered the new job turned it down
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Participles
b.
ten cigaret-u kou˘r-´i-´a mu˘z the cigarette-ACC smoke-th-part man ‘The man smoking a cigarette’ (Czech, ex. from Pavel Caha, p.c.)
Grade modification: Many/most Adjectives can be graded - but this in general not true for event-denoting participles: Exception: So called ‘adjectival’ participles, that seem to have internal adjectival properties as well: Dutch (from Bennis 2004): (15)
a.
b.
(16)
a. b. c. d.
de mij opwindende gebeurtenis the me exciting happening ‘The happening that excites me’ de (*mij) heel opwindende gebeurtenis the me very exciting happening ‘The very exciting happening’ the very elaborate explanation. (stative, adjectival) He elaborated the explanation (*very). the (*very) running man He runs (*very).
Grade modifiers aren’t primarily sensitive to the form/category of the modified element - but rather the semantics of it.
2.4
Summing up
Participles have: 1. Adjectival external syntax (adnominal modifier, complement of copulas) 2. Adjectival morphology: number/gender/case, no tense. 3. Verbal semantics and verbal internal syntax: Accusative case, no simple grade modifiers
2.5
Adverbial participles
Converbs: ‘Adverbial or indeclinable participle’, “A nonfinite verb form whose main function is to mark adverbial subordination.’ Haspelmath (1995)
Adjectives can usually be used as adverbs, sometimes with a special form (17-a), sometimes in an adjectival shape without agreement (18-b). (17)
a. b.
He was careful He carefully closed the door
(18)
a.
De var snabba the were quick.pl ‘They were quick’
Cross-linguistically
b.
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De sprang snabbt hem till sina f¨or¨aldrar They ran quick.neut.sg home to refl.pl parents ‘They quickly ran home to their parents’
Just as it is meaningful to keep adjectives and adverbs apart when doing syntactic analysis, it is well motivated to keep participles and converbs/gerunds/adverbial participles apart.
Source of confusion: converbs are often homophonous with the participles: Italian: passive participle adverbial (from D’allesandro and Roberts 2008): (19)
Mangiata la mela, Gianni si mise al lavoro eat.passptcp.fem.sg the apple, Gianni si mise al lavoro ‘Having eaten the apple, Gianni began to work’
(20)
La mela `e mangiata det.fem.pl apple.fem.sg is eaten eaten.fem.sg ‘The apple is/has been eaten’
Swedish (and English) (from Egerland 2002) - present participles in temporal subordinates: (21)
a. b.
den springande mannen the running man Springande mot n¨odutg˚ angen ropade vi p˚ a hj¨alp running towards the emergency exit we cried for help (i.e., while we were running...)
Finnish: Partitive case on a passive participle gives a temporal subordinate (example form Karlsson 1999): (22)
Nukahdin Peka-n tul-tu-a fall.asleep.pret.1.sg Pekka-gen come.passptcp-part ‘I fell asleep when Pekka had come’ (lit . ‘I fell asleep having arrived Pekka’)
Hungarian, from Laczk´o (1999) - different form for adverbial use: (23)
a.
b.
(24)
a.
b.
A fi´ u-t o¨ssze-k¨ot¨oz-ve a rabl´o kinyitotta a sz´ef-et. the boy-act together-tie-VA the robber opened the safe-act Having tied up the boy, the robber opened the safe. A fi´ u o¨ssze-k¨ot¨oz-ve fek¨ udt a szob´a-ban. the boy together-tie-VA lay the room-in The boy was lying tied up in the room. Ideges´ıt engem a level-et ´ır-´o fi´ u. ´ annoys me the letter-act write-O boy The boy writing a letter is annoying me. Ideges´ıt engem a fi´ u a´ltal tavaly (fel-)´epit-ett h´az. annoys me the boy by last.year (up-)build-T house The house built by the boy last year is annoying me.
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Participles
In what follows, I will put aside the adverbial uses of participles.
3
Tense/aspect and voice in participles
Participles tend to encode two types of information: 1. Tense/aspect (present/past/future - perfective/imperfective ) 2. Voice (Passive and Active) Common Pattern: Two participles (Germanic, Romance and Slavic languages): (25)
a. b.
Present active participle: a man eating a hot dog (the man who is eating a hot dog) Past/perfect passive participle: The hot dog eaten by the man (the hot dog that was eaten by the man)
Before proceeding: Is the the active past “participle” a participle? Often homophonous with passive participles (romance, germanic): (26)
We have eaten apples
Given the definition ‘a word derived from a verb and used as an adjective’ - these active past ‘participles’ do not fit: 1. no gender/number agreement: Spanish: (27)
a.
b.
Hemos comido manzanas have.pres.1.pl eat.ptcp.sg.masc apple.fem.pl ‘We have eaten apples’ las manzanas comidas def.fem.pl apple.fem.pl eat.ptcp.fem.pl ‘The eaten apples’
2. No adnominal use: (28)
a. *the man eaten the apple... b. *el hombre comido la manzana...
3. Not in the complement of copulas: (29)
El hombre he/*es comido la manzana the man has/*is eaten the apple
But watch out: (30)
a.
La donna `e arrivata the train is arrive.ptcp.fem.sg. ‘The woman has arrived’
Cross-linguistically
b.
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La donna ha mangiato la mela ‘the woman has eat.ptcpf the apple’ ‘The woman has eaten the apple’
In many Slavic languages, there is a specific form for the active participle (the so-called) lparticiple. This one show more or less adjectival agreement, though it cannot be used attributively (with Bulgarian being the exception).
Common Two Participle Pattern: (31)
a. b.
Present/progressive active participle: a man eating a hot dog (the man who is eating a hot dog) Past/perfect passive participle: The hot dog eaten by the man (the hot dog that was eaten by the man)
Unattested Two Participle pattern: (32)
a. b.
Present passive participle Past active participle
(see Haspelmath 1993) There are however many languages that have Present passive participles and passive participles - but only when there are more independent forms functioning like present active participles and past passive participles. Lithuanian: 13 participles! Six of them are however converbs (33), (from Klimas 1996) (33)
a. b. c. d. e. f.
dirbant - ‘while working’ dirbus - ‘after having worked’ dirbdavus - ‘after having worked frequently’ dirbsiant - ‘having to work (yet)’ dirbdamas - ‘while working’ dirbtinas - ‘one which still has to be worked’
Comment Present, past, frequentive past and future participles, in passive and active voice exception: past frequentive passive. More or less transparently built up (i.e., participle morphology outside a tensed form) Comment passive suffixes cannot attach outside past tense forms - the infinitival is used instead for passive past participle - no frequentive past passive. The seven remaining participles are transparent combinations of participle morphology outside a tensed or infinitival form. (34)
a. b. c. d.
dirb¸as - ‘working’ - Present Active dirb¸es - ‘(having had) worked’ - Past Acitve dirbdav¸es - ‘used to work’ - Past Frequentive Active d`ırbsi¸as - ‘will going to work’ - Future Active
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Participles
e. f. g.
dirbamas - ‘being worked’ - Present Passive dirbtas - ‘worked’ - Past Passive dirbsimas - ‘going to be worked’ - Future Passive
Questions that arise: 1. What happens in languages with fewer morphological tense distinctions in their participles do the few remaining forms become more vague, or do we have to use full relative clauses to express the absent tense/voice combinations? 2. Why present active and past passive?
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Orientedness/Voice in participles
Lezgian (data from Haspelmath 1993): (35)
a. b. c.
fi-zwapres - fi-zwa-jimp/pres.part. (‘going’) fi-dahab - fiz-ba-jhab.part (‘going’) fe-nwapast - fe-nwa-jpast.part (‘having gone’)
(36)
a.
˘car kˆ xi-zwa-j ru˘s letter.abs write-imp-ptcp girl ‘The girl (who is) writing a letter’ ru˘s-a kˆ xi-zwa-j ˘car girl-erg write-imp-ptcp letter ‘The letter which the girl is writing’
b.
TABLE 1: Tense and Orientedness in Lezgian agent-oriented patient-oriented other-oriented Present tense-aspect 13 (81%) 14 (24%) 12 (48%) Past tense-aspect 3 (19%) 45 (76%) 13 (52%) First part of functional explanation pres.act and pass.past systems: They are the most commonly used forms. Second part harder: Why are they more common? Temporally more simplex. and temporally complex information doesn’t really fit in DP’s? The expected difference between the ‘passive’ participle on the one hand and the ‘active’ participle on the other is that the former predicates over the ‘object’ argument of a transitive verb, which the ‘active’ participle predicates over the ‘subject’ argument when in attributive or predicative position. In fact, languages can vary according to whether their participles are oriented according to semantic, argument structure or grammatical functional criteria.
4.1
Argument unspecified telicity
An argument that reaches some kind of goal/endpoint provided by the verb, can be modified by that same verb in the form of a “passive participle”
Cross-linguistically
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Lieber and Baayen (1997): “inferable eventual position or state” of argument. These participles are insensitive to (a) grammatical functions, (b) argument structure (or number of arguments). Extremely rare: Dutch and Hindi/Urdu are the only examples I know of: (37)
a.
De man heeft 2 uur gezwommen. the man have 2 hours swum ‘The man has swum for two hours’ b. *de 2 uur gezwommen man the 2 hours swam man int. ‘the man that swam for two hours’
(38)
a.
b.
Het meisje is naar de boot gezwommen. the girl is to the boot swum ‘The girl has swum to the boat’ het naar de boot gezwommen meisje the to the boat swum girl ‘The girl that swam to the boat’ (lit: ‘the to the boat swum girl/ the girl swum to the boat’)
Transitive verb: Change of location: (39)
a.
b.
De vijand is de stad genaderd the enemy is the city approached ‘The enemy has approached the city’ het de stad genaderd meisje the the city approached girl ‘The girl that has approached the city’
Hindi/Urdu, from Haspelmath (1994): Change of state. (other examples read, see, learn, put on): (40)
(41)
4.2
*daur-aa hu-aa larkaa run-past.masc.sg partcp-masc.sg boy int ‘The boy who ran’ das ladduu khay-aa hu-aa larkaa ten laddu eat-past.masc.sg partcp-masc.sg boy ‘A boy that ate ten laddus’ (lit. )
Internal argument-oriented participles
In many languages, unaccusative verbs can form ‘passive’ participles. That happens both in languages that have auxiliary alternations for unaccusatives (as in Italian and German), and languages that have ‘have’ for all types of verbs, like e.g. Swedish, Spanish and English (see Iatridou et al. 2001 for discussion): “Passive” participles in these languages seem to be oriented towards something like “an internal
10
Participles
argument”. Subject arguments can be predicated over if the event described by the verb phrase is telic. (42)
a.
b.
c.
(43)
a.
(44)
a.
El hombre querido por su padres def.masc man loveptcp.masc by his parents ‘The man loved by his parents’ b. Las chicas recien llegadas def.fem.pl girls recently arrive.ptcp.fem.pl “The recently arrived girls” c. *La mujer comida la manzana def.fem woman eat.ptcp.fem the apple int. “the woman that has eaten the apple”
b.
c.
(45)
4.3
El hombre es querido por su padres def man is.3.sg loved.m.sing by his parents ‘He’s loved by his parents’ Las chicas han llegado/*es llegadas the girls have arrive.ptcp/*is arrive.ptcp.fem.pl “The girls have/*is arrived” La mujer ha comido la manzana def.fem woman has eat.ptcp.def def.fem manzana ‘The woman has eaten the apple’
La mela `e mangiata det.fem.pl apple.fem.sg is eaten eaten.fem.sg ‘The apple is/has been eaten’ Il treno `e arrivato the train is arrive.ptcp.masc.sg. ‘The train has arrived’ La donna ha mangiato la mela ‘the woman has eat.ptcp.def the apple’ ‘The woman has eaten the apple’
a.
una mela mangiata da Gianni an apple eaten by John b. il treno arrivato entro le 3 the train.macs.sg arriveptcp.masc.sg. ‘The train that arrived by 3’ c. *una donna mangiata un panino a lady eat.ptcp.masc.sg a sandwich int. ‘A woman that ate a sandwich’
Grammatical functions
(many of the) Slavic languages: two ‘participles’: one passive (-en/t-) and one active past participle (-l-).
Cross-linguistically
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Czech (Pavel Caha, p.c.): (46)
a.
b.
(47)
Petr zaˇcerni-l obrazovku Peter blacken-past screen Peter has blackened the screen (the covered it with black stuff) zaˇcernˇe-n-´a obrazovka blackened-pass-agr screen ‘the blackened screen’
a.
Obrazovka zˇcerna-l-a screen turn black-past-agr ‘The screen has turned black.’ b. *zˇcerna-n-´a obrazovka turn black-passsive-agr screen ‘a screen which has turned black’
But still, the unaccusatives behave like unaccusatives in most other languages: Slovenian (from Marvin 2003) (48)
a. *Videl sem ˘zensko, napisalo knjigo seen cop.1.sg woman.acc write.l-ptcp book int. “I saw the woman that wrote the book” b. Videl am ˘zensko, prispelo danes zjutraj. seen cop.1.sg woman.acc arrivel-ptcp today morning ‘I saw a woman that arrived this morning’
Same for Czech: (49)
4.4
zˇcerna-l-´a obrazovka turn black-past-agr screen ‘a screen which has turned black’
Orientation of Active Participles
As far as I’m aware, there is no language that has an active participle that is oriented towards a specific thematic role - they are always sensitive to syntactic functions! (50)
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a. b. c.
the man eating a hamburger (trans) the running man (unerg) the sinking ship (unacc)
Tense/aspect
To what extent are participles specified for tense and aspect? As seen above, languages like Lithuanian have all tense forms, and to my knowledge, the temporal
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Participles
interpretation of the participles is fairly transparent (i.e., the past participle gives a past tense interpretation).
5.1
Passive participles
Slavic, Germanic, Romance: Passive participles are non-future, otherwise no tense/aspect value. Perfective marking (or telicity) triggers past/perfective interpretation: (51)
a. b. c.
Las manzanas comidas (Spanish) de upp¨atna ¨applena (Swedish) The eaten (up) apples (English)
6= “the apples that will be eaten”, or “the apples that are being eaten” (only, “the apples that have been eaten”) Imperfective/atelic = present, ongoing: (52)
a.
b.
5.2
der polizeilich gesuchte Dissident the police sought dissident ‘the dissisdent sought by the police (German)’ den jagade katten the chased cat
Active Participles
Highly underspecified for tense, unless there is a rich number of tense marked forms, or, they carry overt, transparent tense marking. English etc.: No tense sensitivity! (53)
The crying woman left the table The woman who was crying/is crying left the table
Russian (Eugenia Romanova, p.c.) (54)
Vchera ja vstretila muzhika, prodavavshego/ prodajushchego narkotiki Billu yesterday I met guy sellptcl.past/ sellptcl.pres drugs Billdat Yesterday I met the guy who used to sell/ sells drugs to Bill
English etc.: No aspect sensitivity! (55)
the climbers reaching the top in under 3 hours won a prize. The climbers who reached the top under three hours... 6= The climbers who were reaching the top in under three hours...
Past perfective interpretations of so called ‘present’ participles!
Compare Czech (no active past participle for attributive usage):
Cross-linguistically
(56)
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*Cenu vyhr´ali horolezci dos´ah -nou -c -´ı vrcholk-u do tˇr-´ı hodiny. price.acc won climbers reach -perf -ing -agr peak-gen up to three hours ‘The climbers reaching the top in under 3 hours won a prize.’
Perfective verbs can never appear in the present participle!
Reasons for this: • Swedish and English (and probably German too) form present participles on top of the infinitival: (57)
a. b.
sjung-ainf - sjung-a-nde (sing-ing) (Swedish) be - be-ing
• Present active participles in Slavic are formed on top of the present tense (data from Czech, Pavel Caha p.c.): (58)
a.
b.
c.
d.
prac -ova -t work -theme -inf ‘to work’ prac -uj -e work -theme -3sg ‘he is working’ prac -uj -´ı / -ou work -theme -3pl.literary / 3pl.coll ‘they are working’ prac -uj -´ı -c -´ı work -theme -? -ing -agr.adj ‘working’ (participle)
• The infinitival is temporally flexible (in the language under discussion) • Slavic: Only imperfective verbs can get present tense interpretations (cross-linguistically true). However, there is no doubt that passive participles are more inclined to get past tense interpretations than the present participle.
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Conclusion • Even confining our attention to deverbal forms with external adjectival distribution we find that languages vary considerably with respect to: (i) Number of morphologically distinct participles (ii) The nature of the tense and aspect distinctions explicitly encoded (ii) The criteria for the ‘orientation’ of the participle
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Participles
• There appear to be constraints on variation that follow some kind of implicational hierarchy, with passive forms favoring a past or perfective interpretation and active forms favoring a present or imperfective interpretation. • To understand the categories of possible interpretations of participial forms across languages, one probably needs to understand the nature of that language’s tense/aspect system. • Detailed work on individual languages would be necessary to determine whether participles have a uniform structure crosslinguistically, or whether differences are just due to differing levels of morphological specificity in the spell out of a complex set of features.
References Bennis, Hans. 2004. Unergative adjectives and psych verbs. In The Unaccusativity Puzzle: Explorations of the Syntax-Lexicon Interface, edited by Artemis Alexiadou, Elena Anagnostopoulou, and Martin Everaert, pp. 84–113. Oxford University Press, Oxford. Crystal, David. 1991. A dictionary of linguistics and phonetics. The Language library. Blackwell, Oxford, 3rd edn. D’allesandro, Roberta and Ian Roberts. 2008. Movement and Agreement in Italian Past Participles and Defective Phases. Linguistic Inquiry 39 3: 477–491. Egerland, Verner. 2002. On absolute constructions and the aquisition of tense. Working Papers in Scandinavian Syntax 69: 77–120. Haspelmath, Martin. 1993. A Grammar of Lezgian. No. 9 in Mouton Grammar Library. Mouton de Gruyter, Berlin. Haspelmath, Martin. 1994. Passive Participles across Languages. In Voice: Form and Function, edited by Barbara Fox and Paul J. Hopper, pp. 151–179. John Benjamins, Amsterdam/Philadelphia. Haspelmath, Martin. 1995. The converb as a cross-liguistically valid category. In Converbs in Cross-Linguistic Perspective: Structure and Meaning of Adverbial Forms - Adverbial Participles, Gerunds, edited by Martin Haspelmath and Ekkehard K¨onig, pp. 1–57. Mouton de Gruyter, New York, Berlin. Iatridou, Sabine, Elena Anagnostopulou, and Roumyana Izvorski. 2001. Observations about form and meaning of the perfect. In Ken Hale, A life in Language, edited by Michael Kenstowicz, pp. 189–238. MIT Press, Cambridge Mass. Karlsson, Fred. 1999. Finnish: an essential grammar . Essential grammar. Routledge, London. Klimas, Antanas. 1996. The Lithuanian Participles: their system and functions. Litanus 33 1: 1–10. Laczk´o, Tibor. 1999. A Comprehensive Analysis of Three Hungarian Participles. In WCCFL 18 Proceedings, edited by S. Bird, A. Carnie, J. Haugen, and P. Norquest, pp. 272–284. Cascadilla Press, Somerville, Ma.
Cross-linguistically
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Lieber, Rochelle and Harald Baayen. 1997. A semantic principle of auxiliary selection in Dutch. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 15 4: 789–845. Marvin, Tatjana. 2003. Past participles in reduced relatives. Linguistica 43: 141–160. Scott, Gary-John. 2002. Stacked adjectival modification and the structure of nominal phrases. In Functional Structure in the DP and IP , edited by Guglielmo Cinque. Oxford University Press, New York.
