In this response to Hankamer and Mikkelsen (H&M) 2021, we clarify the meaning of the definite article the in out-of-the-blue occurrences of English light verb constructions such as make the claim. While H&M view these as purely uniqueness-requiring determiners (as opposed to purely anaphoric ones in non−light verb constructions), we classify them as instances of Carlsonian weak definites (e.g., Carlson et al. 2006), which presuppose neither uniqueness nor anaphoricity. This clarification casts doubt on H&M’s idea that the D in light verb constructions selects the descriptive CP, which serves to uniquely specify the intended referent. Crosslinguistic data (from the Dravidian language Kannada) also serve to question the relationship between D and CP claimed by H&M. We conclude that D does not directly select the CP in light verb constructions. Nevertheless, these CPs do empirically behave like syntactically selected complements. We suggest that this is because, if the light verb construction is taken as a whole—that is, the light verb + the weak definite nominal—its complement selection properties altogether parallel those of the corresponding lexical verbs. We propose a compositional analysis that reinforces this conclusion.
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Summer 2024
July 11 2024
Does D Select the CP in Light Verb Constructions? A Reply to Hankamer and Mikkelsen 2021
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Sadhwi Srinivas,
Sadhwi Srinivas
Department of Linguistics, College of William & Mary, [email protected]
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Géraldine Legendre
Géraldine Legendre
Department of Cognitive Science, Johns Hopkins University, [email protected]
Search for other works by this author on:
Sadhwi Srinivas
Department of Linguistics, College of William & Mary, [email protected]
Géraldine Legendre
Department of Cognitive Science, Johns Hopkins University, [email protected]
Online ISSN: 1530-9150
Print ISSN: 0024-3892
© 2022 by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
2022
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Linguistic Inquiry (2024) 55 (3): 595–621.
Citation
Sadhwi Srinivas, Géraldine Legendre; Does D Select the CP in Light Verb Constructions? A Reply to Hankamer and Mikkelsen 2021. Linguistic Inquiry 2024; 55 (3): 595–621. doi: https://doi.org/10.1162/ling_a_00477
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