Lecture: Deriving Auxiliary Insertion in Czech

Auxiliary verbs are argued to be repair items, that host the features that the main verb cannot obtain (cf. Chomsky 1957, Bjorkman 2011). Cross-linguistically, Fenger (2020) attested a tendency for the tense feature to be expressed on an auxiliary, if it co-occurs with aspect, which gets marked on the main verb. Slavic languages and their complex tense/aspect marking system therefore provide interesting data to further investigate this pattern. In this presentation, I analyse the verb periphrasis and its feature distribution in Czech. First I analyse the features in the Czech verbal paradigm through minimal pairs. Modeling the seemingly redundant features syntactically reveals morphological redundancies, that also pose problems for economy- and repair-based approaches to auxiliaries in syntax. To derive auxiliary insertion in Czech, I propose a re-analysis of the past tense as aspectual and as more synthetic than periphrastic.Examining the issue of auxiliary insertion through the Slavic tense and aspect marking thus yields insight into the challenges and connections between both topics.

- Bjorkman, Bronwyn Alma Moore (2011). “BE-ing default: The morphosyntax of auxiliaries”. PhD thesis. Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
- Chomsky, Noam (2002). "Syntactic structures". Mouton de Gruyter.
- Fenger, Paula (2020). “Words within Words: The Internal Syntax of Verbs”. PhD thesis. University of Connecticut.

Info

Day: 2024-11-22
Start time: 15:35
Duration: 00:30
Room: 00A03 CNMS
Track: Theoretical Linguistics
Language: en

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