On the distribution and interpretation of voice in Greek anticausatives
Tsiakmakis, Evripidis (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. Departament de Filologia Catalana)
Borràs Comes, Joan Manel, 1984- (Universitat de Barcelona)
Espinal, M. Teresa (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. Departament de Filologia Catalana)

Date:	2023
Abstract:	This paper provides experimental evidence in support of the view that Greek does not have three productive morphological classes of anticausative verbs, but only two: the class of verbs that bear non-active voice morphology and the class of verbs that are morphologically active. Across two experiments, native Greek speakers are found to prefer for each anticausative verb either non-active or active voice morphological marking, in the presence or absence of explicit contextual information. It is also shown experimentally that native speakers prefer an interpretation that involves a specific cause for all anticausatives, especially when the existence of such a cause is favored by the contextual setting. Our empirical findings are consistent with the view that the Voice Phrase that is realized as non-active voice morphology in Greek anticausatives is expletive. From a theoretical perspective, we analyze the expletiveness of this Voice projection as the result of semantic redundancy: the Voice head of Greek anticausatives combines with a v head that encodes a redundant cause meaning component and is, therefore, interpreted merely as introducing an identity function.
Grants:	Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación PID2020-112801GB-I00 Agència de Gestió d'Ajuts Universitaris i de Recerca 2017SGR634
Rights:	Aquest document està subjecte a una llicència d'ús Creative Commons. Es permet la reproducció total o parcial, la distribució, la comunicació pública de l'obra i la creació d'obres derivades, fins i tot amb finalitats comercials, sempre i quan es reconegui l'autoria de l'obra original.
Language:	Anglès
Document:	Article ; recerca ; Versió publicada
Subject:	Expletive voice ; Anticausatives ; Semantic redundancy ; Greek ; Experimental results
Published in:	Frontiers in psychology, Vol. 14 (february 2023) , article number 1068058, ISSN 1664-1078

DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1068058
PMID: 36910815

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