 Posted - 23/05/2001 : 09:59:44
Department of Chinese, Translation & Linguistics
&
Institute of Chinese Linguistics
Summer Seminar Series on Chinese Linguistics (2)
The Morphology-Syntax Mapping Hypothesis
By: Professor Yafei Li
University of Wisconsin - Madison
Time: 2:30 - 4:00 pm
Date: Wednesday, 06 June 2001
Venue: Lecture Theatre P4801, Academic Building, CityU
Abstract: Ever since Chomsky's (1970) "On nominalization", generative
grammarians have been debating on how much of morphology is reducible to
syntax.
Based on the bi-clausal behaviors of Bantu causativization, Baker 1988
proposed that the popular morphological phenomenon has the same underlying
structure as the A made B do C construction in English, the only difference
being that in Bantu, the embedded verb do merges with the matrix verb make
through syntactic movement. This analysis is so successful that it has become
the mainstream theory for a wide variety of morphological phenomena. The goal
of this talk is to show that Baker's theory is incorrect. Semitic languages
also have morphological causativization, and the same bi-clausal behavior
is observed when the root of the derived word is a verb. However, when the
root is adjectival, the construction is consistently mono-clausal. This
contrast is not predicted by Baker's syntactic theory, but follows naturally
from forming all words lexically plus a Morphology-Syntax Mapping procedure
(MSM) that maps word-internal thematic relations to syntax according to widely
adopted syntactic principles. MSM is also shown to explain the properties
of morphological applicatives in Bantu and Iroquoian, noun-incorporation in
Amerindian, compounding in Chinese, and inflectional morphology in English.
About the Speaker: After receiving an M.A. at Shandong University, Jinan,
in 1995, I was admitted to the Ph.D. program at MIT's Department of
Linguistics
and Philosophy. My undergraduate major is in the English language and
literature, and my graduate degrees are both in linguistics with the research
interest in syntax and morphology-syntax interface. Upon graduation, I taught
at Brandeis University and Cornell University. I am now an associate professor
of linguistics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The topics in my
publications include binding, head-movement, compounding and argument
structures, aspectuality, serial verb constructions, the theory of phrase
structure, and methodological issues in linguistic research. Currently, I
am working on two books, one of them on Chinese syntax and co-authored with
Jim Huang and Audrey Li, the other on a theory of the morphology-syntax
interface.
Enquiries: 2788-8705
___________________ All are welcome! ____________________
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