All proceedings
Enter a document #:
Enter search terms:

Info for readers Info for authors Info for editors Info for libraries Order form Shopping cart

Share Paper 3791

Implicit Arguments in Bùlì
Abdul-Razak Sulemana
566-573 (complete paper or proceedings contents)

Abstract

This paper investigates and analyzes the properties of novel constructions called Passive without morphology (PwM) constructions in Buli (a Mabia language of Ghana) and the question of whether they have projected external arguments. It argues that PwM constructions have an external argument which is projected as an implicit argument. This is done by using a set of diagnostics including: control, binding, entailments, and secondary predicates. The major theoretical contribution of this paper is that it motivates an analysis of implicit arguments that requires that they be syntactically projected (Collins 2021). An alternative analysis where an implicit argument is not syntactically present like (Bruening 2013) is unable to capture this data.

Published in

Proceedings of the 41st West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics
edited by Nikolas Webster, Yağmur Kiper, Richard Wang, and Sichen Larry Lyu
Table of contents
Printed edition: $545.00