Instrument as internal subject: evidence from the verbs baad ‘cut’, maj ‘burn’, and pan ‘tie’ in Thai (an in person talk or poster)

Danutham Worapipat

Keywords: instrument, internal subject, argument structure, instrument entailment, obligatory instrument verbs

TL;DR: Instrument subject exhibit syntactic heterogeneity; it is internal subject (VP-internal) for obligatory instrument verbs in Thai.

Abstract:

The instrument subject (e.g. the axe in the axe broke the window) is uniformly analyzed in literature as the external argument (as effector by Van Valin & Wilkins (1996), as initiator by Ramchand (2003), as agent or causer by Alexiadou & Schäfer (2006)). Thus, it is structurally the same as the agent subject. I show that it is not always the case. The instrument subject of some verbs in Thai is the internal subject (à la Hale & Keyser 1993), thus yielding an unaccusative-like syntactic structure, despite their transitive valency. Along with this unaccusative structure, I argue that the internal generation of the subject also predicts their instrumental interpretation, based on Pylkkänen's (2008) event syntax.

In Thai, there is a class of transitive verbs such as baad ‘cut’, maj ‘burn’ and pan ‘tie’ that take instrument-like subjects. The use of the agent subject with this verb class results in ungrammaticality. This verb class has an obligatory instrument entailment, hence obligatory instrument verbs (Koenig et al., 2008). The instrument participant is interpreted as such that it has a property related to the event denoted by the verb. For example, the verb baad ‘cut’ forces or limits its instrument argument to have sharp edges. This position aligns with Jerro’s (2017) analysis that instruments are simply causers at some medial point in the causal chain and for obligatory instrument verbs, instruments are entailed from the verbs themselves.

I demonstrate that the instrument subject of this verb class is generated at spec VP, hence unaccusative-like syntactic structure. First, these verbs are clause-internally causativized by the morpheme tham, same as unaccusatives. On the other hand, unergatives and agentive transitives can only be productively causativized by the combination of a causative morpheme and a complementizer tham-haj (Harley, 2017). Second, the instrument argument of this verb class cannot be demoted in passives while it is possible for the agent of the agentive verb. Given that the Thai passive morpheme thuk is syntactically the same English PASS operator (Schäfer, 2017), the local relationship between PASS and Voice only allows suppression of the external argument. Because the instrument subject of this verb class is not introduced by Voice, it cannot be suppressed by the presence of the passive morpheme. Third, these verbs can form an idiom (through pseudo noun-incorporation) with their instrument argument. According to Marantz’s (2013) locality for contextual allosemy, verbs can only from idioms with internal arguments. Lastly, when modified by the adverb ikkrang ‘again’, this verb class only produces the repetitive reading. Given Pylkkänen's event syntax, there are two adjunction sites for ‘again’ modification, VoiceP and VP. For an agentive transitive predicate, the repetitive reading requires modification of the VoiceP, while it is VP for the restitutive reading. Since the highest argument of this verb class is the instrument internal subject at spec VP, both adjunction sites of ‘again’ modification yields the same repetitive reading where both the instrument and the theme scope under the ‘again’ operator.

My analysis of the instrument subject of the verbs such as baad ‘cut’, maj ‘burn’ and pan ‘tie’ in Thai as the internal subject does not only capture the obligatory instrument entailment, but also explains their syntactic properties similar to those of inchoatives. The argument structure proposed for the instrument internal subject is identical to ditransitives except that there is no external argument. The discovery of this verb class in Thai instead completes the typological picture of the syntax of the argument structure by filling the gap in the logical possibilities.

Submission Number: 224