Looking for the verbal category in Basque syntax: not found
Résumé
i. In this talk, I am going to propose that the verbal category does not syntactically exist in Basque and that it is a post-syntactic construct derived from the configuration in which the predicate is lexicalized. This proposal is supported by two analyses about Basque predicates: (i) a study of Basque derived predicates, and (ii) an analysis of the analytic and synthetic verbal forms. ii. Most predicates in Basque are derived, formed attaching the-tu suffix to almost any kind of element like a noun –ama-tu (mother-TU) 'become a mother or turn sb into a mother'– an adjective – lehor-tu (dry-TU) 'dry', etxe-gabe-tu (home-without-TU) 'to evict'–, an adposition –etxe-ra-tu (home-ALL-TU) 'go home, take sb home', ur-ez-ta-tu (water-INSTR-TA-TU) 'water'– or an adverbial kind of element –azkar-tu (quick-TU) 'quicken', sail-ka-tu (class-KA-TU) 'to classify'. Looking at this data and adopting an event configuration approach like that of the First Phase Syntax (Ramchand 2008), we could think that-tu is a kind of verbalizer which conveys a part of event configuration and which is related to the process subevent: it gives a transitional kind of meaning and it turns the element in its complement into a verb. Nevertheless, as I explain below (section v)-tu does not seem to have verbal category, but nominal one. iii. The case of location predicates formed by means of the allative adposition (e.g. etxe-ra-tu (home-ALL-TU) 'go home, take sb home') is particularly enlightening. Hale & Keyser (1993) argue for similar predicates in English (e.g. shelve) that they are built on a silent verb to which an adposition and its complement have been incorporated. However, this analysis cannot explain why in Basque we can have location predicates only consisting of the allative adposition, and not, for example, of the ablative (like in *etxe-tik-tu (home-ABL-TU), with an intended meaning of 'going from home') or of the approximative allative (like in *etxe-rantz-tu (home-APPROX-TU), intended 'going towards home'). If there were a silent verb, location predicates must be, in principle, able to be form from any kind of Path adposition. Establishing a parallel and isomorphic relation between the event decomposition (à la Ramchand 2008) and the inner structure of Path adpositions (à la Pantcheva 2011), I argue that, in this case, the allative is lexicalizing the process subevent. A consequence of this analysis is that the process head must not be obligatorily verbal, since, in this case, it is lexicalized by an element which is usually selected to spell out an adposition. iv. Regarding verbal configurations, there are two forms in which a predicate can surface in Basque. The analytic configuration is the most widespread one. As a matter of fact, the number of predicates which can align in the synthetic form is very small (no more than 15, Euskaltzaindia 1997, e.g. etorri 'come', joan 'go', egon 'be', etc.) and in some cases, they have defective paradigms. Furthermore, the synthetic form is nowadays restricted to the imperfective category. In contrast, the analytic configuration can be used with all verbs, is the only productive configuration and can be used to convey several aspectual categories like the perfect (1), the perfective (2), the imperpective (3) and also the prospective (4). The analytic configuration consists of a lexical predicate marked for aspect and an auxiliary which supports all inflectional morphology like person, case and number agreement, and also tense and mood markers.
Domaines
Linguistique
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