Syncretism in Nanosyntax and three types of passive participles in Czech
| Authors | |
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| Year of publication | 2020 |
| Type | Article in Periodical |
| Magazine / Source | Naše řeč |
| MU Faculty or unit | |
| Citation | |
| Web | |
| Keywords | Nanosyntax; passive; syncretism |
| Description | Nanosyntax is a relatively new framework of linguistic analysis that originates in the work by Starke (2009; 2018). In this article, we focus on the framework’s ability to deal with syncretism. To have a specific case to work with, 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 distinc- tion 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 Re- sultant-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 that is usually covered by the term syncretism. In the last part, we describe how such a three-way ambiguity can be captured in Nanosyntax. |
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