Syncretism in Nanosyntax and three types of passive participles in Czech

• Authors: Pavel Caha , Lucie Taraldsen Medová

Title variants

CS

Synkretismus v nanosyntaxi : tři typy pasivních participií v češtině

• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

Nanosyntax is a relatively new framework of linguistic analysis that originates in the work of Starke (2009; 2018). In this article, we focus on the framework’s ability to deal with syncretism. As a specific case, we analyze passive participles in Czech. Building on Kratzer’s (2000) work, we introduce a three-way ambiguity of the Czech passive participle. The first distinction we make is between stative (adjectival) and eventive (verbal) passives. The second distinction applies within the set of stative participles and divides them into Target-state participles and Resultant-state participles. The latter describe states that hold as a result of some prior event taking place. Target-state participles entail no prior event. The result is a situation where we have three distinct meanings and just a single form (namely the passive participle), which is a situation usually covered by the term syncretism. In the last part, we describe how such a three-way ambiguity can be captured in Nanosyntax.

Keywords

EN

nanosyntax; passive; syncretism

CS

nanosyntax; pasivum; synkretismus

Discipline

• PHILOLOGY_&_LINGUISTICS: PHILOLOGY & LINGUISTICS

• Publisher: Institute of the Czech Language, Czech Academy of Sciences
• Journal: Naše řeč (Our Speech)
• Year: 2020
• Volume: 103
• Issue: 1-2
• Pages: 113-130
• Document type: ARTICLE

Contributors

author

Pavel  Caha

• Naše řeč, redakce, Ústav pro jazyk český AV ČR, v.v.i., Letenská 4, 118 51 Praha 1, Czech Republic

author

Lucie  Taraldsen Medová

• Naše řeč, redakce, Ústav pro jazyk český AV ČR, v.v.i., Letenská 4, 118 51 Praha 1, Czech Republic