Summary: This contribution is organized as follows: In section 1, I propose a formulation of the Mirror Principle (MP) based on syntactic features; the examples will be taken from Causatives and Anti-Causatives that are derived by...
moreSummary:
This contribution is organized as follows: In section 1, I propose a formulation of the Mirror Principle (MP) based on syntactic features; the examples will be taken from Causatives and Anti-Causatives that are derived by affixes (in Russian, Czech, Polish, German, English, as compare dto Japanese and Chichewa) by head-to-head-Movement.
In section 2, I review some basic facts in support of a syntactic approach to Merge of Causatives and Anti-Causatives, proposing that theta roles are also syntactic Features that merge functional affixes with their stems in a well-defined way.
I first try to give some external evidence in showing that Causatives and Anti-Causatives obey a principle of thematic hierarchy early postulated in generative literature by Jackendoff (1972; 43), and later reformulated in terms of argument-structure-ordering principle by Grimshaw (1990: chapter 2).
Crucial for my paper is the working hypothesis that every syntactic theory which tries to capture the data not only descriptively but also explanatively should descend from three levels of representation: a-structure where the relation between predicate and its arguments (and adjuncts) takes place, thematic strucure where the theta-roles are assigned to their arguments, and event structure, which decides about the aspectual distribution and division of events.
Keywords: Anti-Caausatives, Argument-Structure-Ordering Principle, Causative Alternation (CAL), Distributed Morphology (DM), Event Semantics, Lexical Functional Grammar (LF), Mental Lexicon, Minimalist Program (MP), Montague Grammar, Unaccusatives, Thematic Hierarchy, Mirror Principle, Functional Hierarchy, Universal Grammar (UG).
