The Syntax-Semantics Group will be meeting on Monday, February 17 at 3pm in Room 117 of the McGill linguistics department. Online participants can join with this link: https://mcgill.zoom.us/meeting/register/16ZiB1ATRMGSUxbkGOJGvw.
George Bennett (McGill University) will be discussing “Argument Structure in Mainland Scandinavian pancake sentences.” Here is George’s abstract:
Prototypical ‘pancake sentences’ are copula sentences involving a subject (e.g., ‘pancakes’) and a predicate (e.g., ‘yummy’), in which the subject DP is interpreted as an event (‘making/eating pancakes’) and the predicate shows default agreement-features (neuter singular in Mainland Scandinavian). Furthermore, ‘pancake subjects’ have oblique case, and these sentences exhibit an argument alternation whereby the pancake argument is introduced by a PP adjunct instead of occurring in subject position.
I discuss new data in the form of a class of evaluative verbs (‘burnt pancakes suck(s)’, etc.) which exhibit these same exact case, agreement and argument alternation properties. Unlike unergative and unaccusative verbs, these verbs cannot occur in impersonal passives, but exhibit an active voice form in impersonal constructions. These verbs therefore pattern with weather/emission verbs (‘rains’, ‘snows’) and sensory/perception verbs (‘tastes’, ‘sounds’) which exhibit the same argument alternation involving the PP adjunct and inability to passivise. This might suggest that pancake subjects are non-core (i.e. applied) arguments. I present a developing account involving a stipulated High Applicative phrase that might capture the case, agreement and argument alternation properties of both copular and verbal pancake sentences, in addition to weather/emission and sensory/perception constructions.