The Korean Association for the Study of English Language and Linguistics

Korean Journal of English Language and Linguistics - Vol. 18 , No. 3
[Paper List] [Goto Volume List]
Full Issue PDF

[ Article ]
Korea Journal of English Language and Linguistics - Vol. 18, No. 3, pp. 282-305
Abbreviation: KASELL
ISSN: 1598-1398 (Print) 2586-7474 (Online)
Print publication date 30 Sep 2018
Received 05 Jul 2018 Revised 16 Sep 2018 Accepted 18 Sep 2018
DOI: https://doi.org/10.15738/kjell.18.3.201809.282

On the Status of the Reflexive Found with English Inherently Reflexive Verbs: A Response to Kallulli (2013)
Isaac Gould
Professor, Ewha Womans University 52 Ewhayeodae-gil, Seodaemun-gu, Seoul 03760 (gould@ewha.ac.kr)

Correspondence to : Isaac Gould Professor, Ewha Womans University 52 Ewhayeodae-gil, Seodaemun-gu, Seoul 03760 gould@ewha.ac.kr

Funding Information ▼
Abstract

Gould, I. 2018. On the status of the reflexive found with English inherently reflexive verbs: A response to Kallulli (2013). Korean Journal of English Language and Linguistics 18-3, 282-305. This paper challenges the recent claim in Kallulli (2013) that the reflexive morphology found with inherently reflexive verbs (IRVs) in English (as in e.g. to behave oneself or to conduct oneself) is verbal morphology akin to the deponent verbal morphology found in languages such as Albanian and Greek. I discuss how the types of evidence raised by Kallulli for this claim are either inconclusive or in fact point toward an alternative claim when a more detailed look at IRV data in English is undertaken. As an alternative, I advance a view that builds on Schäfer (2012), as well as Büring (2005), and that is supported by the balance of evidence discussed here. I propose that the reflexives are fully-fledged pronominal arguments of the IRVs. Thus, I claim that the reflexives are selected for by the IRVs, and I identify a thematic role that these reflexives receive from the IRVs.

Keywords: deponent verbs, inherently reflexive verbs, passives, unaccusative verbs
Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Suyeon Yun along with several reviewers for their help with various aspects of this paper. This work was supported by the CORE Program funded by the Korean government (MOE)

References
1. Abney, S. 1987. The English Noun Phrase in Its Sentential Aspect. Doctoral dissertation, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
2. Baker, M., K. Johnson and I. Roberts. 1989. Passive arguments raised. Linguistic Inquiry 20(2), 219-251.
3. Bennett, C. E. 1907. New Latin Grammar. New York: Allyn and Bacon.
4. Büring, D. 2005. Binding Theory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
5. Kallulli, D. 2007. Rethinking the passive/anticausative distinction. Linguistic Inquiry 38(4), 770-780.
6. Kallulli, D. 2013. (Non-)canonical passives and reflexives: Deponents and their like. In A. Alexiadou and F. Schäfer, eds., Non-canonical Passives, 337-358. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company.
7. Levin, B. 1993. English Verb Classes and Alternations: A Preliminary Investigation. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
8. Levin, B. and M. Rappaport Hovav. 1995. Unaccusativity: At the Syntax-lexical Semantics interface. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
9. Marantz, A. 1997. No escape from syntax: Don’t attempt morphological analysis in the privacy of your own lexicon. Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics 4(2), 201-225.
10. Massam, D. 1990. Cognate objects as thematic objects. Canadian Journal of Linguistics 35(2), 161-190.
11. Patrick, J., J. Richard, M. Pious and D. A. Ritchie. 2001. The Oxford Guide to the United States Government. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
12. Perlmutter, D. M. and P. M. Postal. 1983. The 1-Advancement Exclusiveness Law. In M. D. Perlmutter and C. G. Rosen, eds., Studies in Relational Grammar 2, 81-125. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
13. Postal, P. M. 2010. Edge-based Clausal Syntax: A Study of (Mostly) English Object Structure. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
14. Reuland, E. 2009. Binding, locality, and sources of invariance. Talk handout at the Conference on Minimalist Approaches to Syntactic Locality, Hungarian Academy of Sciences.
15. Rooth, M. 1992. A theory of focus interpretation. Natural Language Semantics 1(1), 75-116.
16. Schäfer, F. 2012. The passive of reflexive verbs and its implications for theories of binding and case. The Journal of Comparative Germanic Linguistics 15(3), 213-268.
17. Smith, C. S. 1970. Jespersen’s ‘move and change’ class and causative verbs in English. In M. A. Jazayery, E. C. Polomé and W. Winter, eds., Linguistic and Literary Studies in Honor of Archibald A. Hill, Vol. 2: Descriptive Linguistics, 101-109. The Hague:.
18. Mouton. Xu, Z., M. Aronoff and F. Anshen. 2007. Deponency in Latin. In M. Beerman, G. Corbett, D. Brown and A. Hippisley, eds., Deponency and Morphological Mismatches, 127-144.
19. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Zombolou, K. and A. Alexiadou. 2012. The canonical function of the deponent verbs in Modern Greek. In F. Rainer, F. Gardani, H. C. Luschützky and W. U. Dressler, eds., Morphology and Meaning: Selected papers from the 15th International Morphology Meeting, Vienna, February 2012, 331-344. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company.