The Morphosyntax of Transitions

This book examines the cross-linguistic expression of changes of location or state taking as a starting point Talmy''s typological generalization that classifies languages as either ''satellite-framed'' or ''verb-framed''. In verb-framed languages such as those of the Romance family the result state or location is encoded in the verb. In satellite-framed languages such as English or Latin the result state or location is encoded in a non-verbal element. These languages can be further subdivided into weak satellite-framed languages in which the element expressing result must form a word with the verb and strong satellite-framed languages in which it is expressed by an independent element: an adjective a prepositional phrase or a particle. In this volume Victor Acedo-Matellan explores the similarities between Latin and Slavic in their expression of events of transition: neither allows the expression of complex adjectival resultative constructions and both express the result state or location of a complex transition through prefixes. They are therefore analysed as weak satellite-framed languages along with Ancient Greek and some varieties of Mandarin Chinese and stand in contrast to strong satellite-framed languages such as English the Germanic languages in general and Finno-Ugric. This variation is expressed in terms of the morphological properties of the head that expresses transition which is argued to be affixal in weak but not in strong satellite-framed languages. The author takes a neo-constructionist approach to argument structure which accounts for the verbal elasticity shown by Latin and a Distributed Morphology approach to the syntax-morphology interface.