Arizona State University



Aspectual Particles in Dutch and English: the role of inner aspect

15 June 2005

Separable and inseparable prefixes in Dutch, German, and Old English and particles in Modern English and Scandinavian have frequently been discussed in the literature. In this paper, I will build on ideas about an inner aspect to provide a structural analysis first for Modern English and then for Dutch. I claim particles and the objects of particle verbs play a crucial role in indicating perfectivity and having either the particle head or the object move to the head of EP and specifier of EP respectively accounts for this relation. In Dutch, inseparable prefixes are similarly positioned in the head of an inner aspect phrase and are therefore in complementary distribution with the participial prefix ge-, which is in the same position. The separable prefix, in contrast, is in the specifier of the inner aspect phrase and can therefore occur together with ge-. I also show that Dutch separable prefixes become inseparable over time, and that this is in accordance with an Economy Principle, favoring a head over a specifier.

1 Introduction

In many Indo European and non-Indo European languages, `preverbs' occur that form complex predicates indicating result, aspect, etc. Germanic languages have similar constructions (see Streitberg 1891, Mossé 1938, Booij 2002, Stiebels & Wunderlich 1994, Brinton 1988, Fischer et al 2002) but are unique in having separable and inseparable preverbs (here referred to as prefixes) that interact with another aspectual marker, namely Dutch, German, and Old English ge-.

Building on ideas about an inner aspect by e.g. Jelinek (1998) and Travis (2000), I provide an analysis for Dutch. I claim that inseparable prefixes are in the head of an inner aspect phrase and are therefore in complementary distribution with the participial prefix ge-, which is in the same position. The separable prefix, in contrast, is in the specifier of the inner aspect phrase and can therefore occur together with ge-. Data from Blom & Booij (2003) show that, through time, separable prefixes become inseparable, and I argue that this is in accordance with an Economy Principle formulated in van Gelderen (2004).

Numerous other analyses have been given (van Riemsdijk 1978, den Dikken 1992; 2003, van den Wijngaarden 1996, Zeller 2001, Dehé 2002) for a variety of languages. Many of the recent analyses argue that the inseparable prefix is part of the verb and that the separable prefix is a phrasal complement to the verb. My proposal renders the two prefixes more alike and is therefore, I'll argue, to be preferred.

In section 2, I will first provide some background on inner aspect, first in general and then in present and earlier English. Then, in section 3, Dutch prefixes are discussed and in section 4, an analysis is given for contemporary Dutch. Section 5 shows how the analysis differs from some competing ones. In section 6, I provide some more complex constructions in which these prefixes occur. Section 7 examines the reason for changes in Dutch, and section 8 is a conclusion.

The data in this paper come from native speaker judgements, as well as from corpora. For Modern English, I have used the British National Corpus (BNC) and, for earlier English, the Dictionary of Old English texts (DOE) and the Helsinki Corpus (HC). Even though the examples were found using the DOE and HC, the references are to text editions.

2 Inner and Outer Aspect

ASP(ect) has become a frequently used functional category in Tenny (1987; 1994), Marácz (1990), Arad (1998), Travis (2000), to mention but a few. Many researchers assume both an inner (here E for Extent Phrase) and outer aspect (here ASP), with a structure as in (1):

1. TP

. T'

T ASPP

. ASP'

ASP vP

. v'

v EP

. E'

E VP

Inner aspect (and movements into this phrase) would account for the relationship that exists in many languages between movement, a certain Case, a certain aspect, and definiteness. I have called it E(xtent) Phrase, since it expresses the extent to which the action has been done and how much the object has been affected. Van Hout (1998: 19) formulates it thus: "a direct object provides the measure along which the event develops over time". The inner aspect category seems universally applicable. For instance, Travis (2000) posits a structure similar to (1) for Tagalog and Malagasy, Jelinek (1998) does so for Yaqui, and Sybesma (1999: 76) for Chinese.

In English, the reason for assuming outer aspect, or ASP is, for instance, to accommodate progressive -ing. The evidence in English for postulating an E as in (1) consists of the word order facts in (2) and (3). These data have often been cited (e.g. Dehé 2002 and den Dikken 2003 most recently):

2. I turned it/the light off.

3. I turned off *it/the light.

One way to account for these data is to say that in phrasal verb constructions, the (definite) object either moves to the specifier of the inner aspect, as in (2), or that, as in (3), the particle off moves to the head (of inner aspect) to indicate that the event is complete2. These movements are there to indicate that the action took place and that the object was affected. The two possibilities are represented in (4a) and (4b)3:

4a. vP b. vP

. v' . v'

v EP v EP

. EP' turn . E'

E VP E VP

. V' offk . V'

turn itj V AP the light V AP

tj off A

tk

Sanz (1996) likewise links perfectivity, definiteness, and transitivity by assuming, based on Tenny (1987), the feature [measure] to occupy a head that is checked by an object DP. Hence, `I ate' is not perfective but `I ate the apple' is. I modify Sanz's tree in (4a), where the definite object moves to the Spec of EP. Indefinite objects occur (I turned off a light) very infrequently in either construction. Thus, in the 100 million-word British National Corpus (hence BNC), there are no indefinite objects with the phrasal verb turned of, whereas there are 122 definite objects with this verb. This rarity is expected since indefinites do not check measure. I will therefore focus on definites. Apart from the object, the presence of a particle is also important for the aspect, e.g. eat is imperfective, but eat up is perfective.

In terms of Economy, (4b) may be preferable over (4b) since only a head is moved, and this is in fact the case with definite objects since turned DP off, as in (2), occurs only half as often as turned off DP, as in (3), in the BNC (namely 40 and 82 times respectively). It is possible that moving to the Spec of EP can fulfill both the need to check the affectedness of the event and to indicate measure. Again, the BNC provides some insight. When (measuring) quantifiers such as half and all are used with the object, as in (5), construction (2) becomes twice as frequent:

5. then they turned all the lights off (BNC - KCA 192).

6. You turned two pages over (BNC - KBB 10628).

Since aspect is relevant, a structure such as (4) is preferable over one that doesn't make the connection to aspect, e.g. as in Dehé (2002). Dehé's underlying structure is (7) where the V and particle move to the head of AGRo and the DP to the specifier:

7. vP

v AGRoP

AGRo VP

V DP

V Part

put away the phone (from Dehé 2002: 240)

I come back to other analyses in section 5, but they all have in common that they don't make use of aspect.

Structure (4) also accounts for the fact (noted e.g. in Den Dikken 2003) that the particle in (2) can be modified but that the one in (3) cannot. Sentences (8) and (9) show these respective judgements, corroborated by checking right off in the BNC:

8. She can shut it right off (BNC KB7 1279).

9. *She shut right off the light.

Since the particle is a full phrase in (4a), it should allow modification, but since it isn't in (4b), it shouldn't. This turns out to be the correct prediction.

English has not always had particles such as in (2) and (3). Old English has a ge-/a- past participle prefix that is used to indicate perfective, as in (10), as well as other prefixes to show degree of affectedness, as in (11), or both, as in (12). For more on this, see Mustanoja (1960: 446) and Quirk & Wrenn (1957: 114ff):

10. Sona þæt gesawon

soon that saw

`Soon they saw that' (Beowulf 1591, Klaeber edition).

11. þa wolde se cing ... beforan eallon his witan uphebban

then wanted the king ... before all his knowledge show

`Then the king wanted to show his knowledge before all' (Charter 939, Whitelock 1930).

12. Hu lange sceal min feond beon uppahafen ofer me

`How long shall my enemy be elevated over me' (Paris Psalter, Krapp p. 19).

The structure of these is similar to that of Dutch, which I will discuss in section 4, namely with ge- in the head position of an inner aspect and the prefix in the specifier. I won't give the structures here, but see (27) below.

Both ge- and aspectual prefixes are being lost in late Old English (see e.g. Mustanoja 1960), and reinforced or replaced by an adverb. The Peterborough Chronicle is an ideal text to examine since its early entries are in Old English but the entries from 1120 to 1154 are in Early Middle English. Sentences (13) to (15) show the reinforcement (where the number indicates the date of the entry) by up, and (16) shows the replacement:

13. 7 ælc unriht for gode and for worulde up aras

and every wrong before God and before world up rose

`and every wrong in the sight of God and of the world rose up' (PC, 1100).

14. til he aiauen up here castles

`till they gave up their castles' (PC, 1140).

15. asprang up to þan swiðe sæ flod

`(there) sprang up to such height (the) sea flood' (PC, 1099).

16. til hi iafen up here castles

`till they gave up their castles' (PC, 1137).

The source of the reinforcement is an adverb, and the reanalysis can be indicated in a tree as in (17):

17. vP

. v'

v EP

. EP'

E VP

. V'

iafen V AP

upi here castles ti

Elenbaas (2004) argues that texts from areas with Norse influence exhibit the verb particle order, as in (14) to (15), more than texts from areas outside this sphere of influence. The Peterborough Chronicle is a text from an area of possibly Norse influence. However, the reinforcement and replacement occur throughout Old English, which can be seen from the increase throughout the PC, e.g. up occurs 56 times but starts to reinforce an a-prefixed verb only from 1087 on.

Adverbs, as in (18) and (19), are still a new potential source for changing towards inner aspect. These sentences do not need the in and up, but the inclusion of these adverbs make a perfective interpretation much stronger:

18. We received it in for you (University librarian, Arizona).

19. Do you mind if I open me eyes up slowly

(Onslow in `Keeping up appearances', BBC TV).

This means speakers add a new (resultative) adverb, as in (20), comparable to (4a) above:

20. vP

. v'

v EP

received . E'

E VP

. V'

it V A

t in

A next step might be for the adverb to start moving to E, which would result in the, as yet unattested, (21):

21. I received in a package.

I'll now turn to the Dutch data and show differences and similarities with English.

3 Dutch

As mentioned, aspectual markers in Dutch and some other Germanic languages are divided in separable and inseparable. Many of the separable prefixes have spatial meanings and are adverbial-like. This is clear in the verbs that have ambiguous meanings, e.g. ondergaan can mean `go under' or `endure'. In the meaning of `go under', onder `under' still has adverbial meaning whereas the meaning `endure' is less transparent. This is not an absolute rule, and I will therefore only pay attention to syntactic characteristics in coming up with a structure.

When prefixed, a perfective meaning is typically the result: slapen `sleep' is imperfective, but inslapen [in-sleep] `sleep in' is perfective. Instances of separable prefixes with their verbs are Dutch opzoeken [up-search] `look up', uitzoeken [out-search] `figure out', uitlezen [out-read] `finish reading', and voorlezen [for-read] `read to someone'. Instances of inseparable ones are doorzoeken [through-search] `search', [for-spell] voorspellen `predict', and doorgronden [through-ground] `understand'. Some of the inseparable prefixes are more idiomatic, but some are not (e.g. doorzoeken [through-search] `search' in (23) below). As in English, the connection of the prefixes to aspect will be exploited in section 4 by having the prefixes connected to EP.

The reason behind the name of these prefixes is that when the verb moves (to second position) in main clauses, it leaves the separable prefix, as in (22), but takes the inseparable prefix along, as in (23):

22 a. Ik zoek dit uit

I search this out

`I'll get to the bottom of this'.

b. *Ik uitzoek dit

I out-search this

23 a. Ik doorzoek het huis

I through-search the house

`I am searching through the house'.

b. *Ik zoek het huis door

I search the house through

When in contrast, separable prefixes can also be fronted, as in (24) (see also Hoeksema 1991), where afmaken `finish' consists of a particle af `off' and a verb maken `make':

24. Ze wilden dat project afmaken en af hebben ze het ook gemaakt

they wanted that project finish and off have they it also finished

`They wanted to finish that project and finish it they did'.

Some more examples of the two kinds of prefixes can be found in tables 1 and 2. In table 1, the two separable prefixes uit- `out' and na- `after' have been listed with some of the verbs they happen to both occur with. In table 2, some inseparable prefixes are listed:

________________________________________________________________________

uit: na:

maken: uitmaken `close off' namaken `imitate'

doen: uitdoen `turn off' nadoen `copy'

zoeken: uitzoeken `find out' nazoeken `research'

vinden: uitvinden `figure out'

draaien: uitdraaien `turn off'

kijken: nakijken `correct'

zingen: uitzingen `finish singing' nazingen `copy someone's song'

komen: uitkomen `become known' nakomen `come after/live up to'

wijken: uitwijken `give way'

________________________________________________________________________

Table 1: Some separable aspectual prefixes with uit `out' and na `after'.

_______________________________________________________________

door/over: voor/onder:

zien: doorzien `see through' voorzien `provide'

zoeken: doorzoeken `search through' onderzoeken `search'

schatten: overschatten `overestimate' onderschatten `underestimate'

mijnen: ondermijnen `undermine'

komen: overkomen `happen'

_______________________________________________________________

Table 2: Some inseparable prefixes

Even though the tables are not complete, they are provided to show that separable prefixes are more productive and have more transparent meanings. This pattern is expected if separable prefixes are still closer to adverbs, as I'll argue below, i.e. closer to English (20).

In what follows, I will focus on the syntactic differences between the two kinds of prefixes. The Verb-second data in (22) and (23) will turn out to be important for the analysis in section 4. Separable prefixes, as will be shown below, occur with ge- but inseparable ones don't and separable prefixes have modifiers unlike inseparable ones, as I'll also discuss in the next section. Additionally, to be discussed in section 6, infinitival te- separates the separable prefix from the verb but precedes the inseparable one and Verb Raising facts are different.

4 Separable Prefixes as Specifiers and Inseparable Prefixes as Heads

Apart from the separability differences shown in (22), (23), and (24) above, the two prefixes differ in that the separable prefixes need ge- when the verb is a participle, as in (25ab), but the inseparable prefixes do not, as (26a) shows. In the latter case, a ge-less form is needed as in (26b):

25 a. Ik heb dit geval uitgezocht

I have this case out-searched

`I have examined this case out'.

b. *Ik heb dit geval uitzocht

I have this case out-searched

26 a. *Ik heb deze kast doorgezocht

I have this cabinet through-searched

`I have searched this cabinet'.

b. Ik heb deze kast doorzocht

I'll assume structures as in Kayne (1994) and Zwart (1994) for `SOV' languages, namely V-initial ones. I'll briefly discuss the DP object which presumably moves to check Case. The prefix ge- functions, as in Old English (10) and German, to indicate perfective and is positioned just before the lexical verb in the inner aspect, or E(xtent)P.

The analysis I argue for is that separable prefixes, such as uit in (25), are in the specifier of the EP (originating as adverbs in an earlier stage of Dutch), and that the verb moves to E in the case of an overt ge-, as in (25a), or to (empty) E and then to its final position as in (22a) above:

27. vP

. v'

ik v EP

. E'

uit E VP

ge . V'

DP V ...

dit zocht

(27) is compatible with (22a) above since the V head skips the specifier `prefix' when ge- and the auxiliary are absent and the verb has to move further. This is only possible if the prefix is in the specifier position, as in (22a), and not in (23b) since the `prefix' is a head in that case. Following mainstream assumptions, the object will also move leftward (for Case checking).

Additional evidence for having the `prefix' be in a specifier position is that the separable one, as in (28), can be modified (see also den Dikken 1992: 106 and Zeller 2001, chap 2), indicating it is a phrase. The inseparable prefix in (29) cannot be, expected if it is a head1:

28. Hij is de trap recht opgelopen

He is the stairs straight up-walked

`He walked straight up the stairs'.

29. *Ik heb dit recht doorzocht

I have this straight through-searched

The argument is slightly complicated since the modifying word recht `right, straight' is ambiguous between a degree adverb modifying op `up' and a regular adverb modifying hij `he' (i.e. `he' is standing straight). In (28), the degree adverb reading is available, whereas it isn't in (29). This shows that op is a phrase in the former but not the latter. The reading where recht modifies the subject doesn't tell us anything about the status of op/door. Den Dikken's (1992; 2003) example (30) is not ambiguous since vlak `right' cannot modify the subject. As in (28), this modification is only possible with separable prefixes:

30. dat Jan de bal vlak over heeft geschoten

that Jan the ball right over has shot

`that Jan shot the ball right over the goal' (2003: 2).

In the case of inseparable prefixes, the tree is similar to (27) above but with the prefix in the head E, in complementary distribution with ge-. The verb when it moves to second position must therefore move to E and take the prefix along:

31. vP

. v'

ik v EP

. E'

E VP

door . V'

DP V A

dit zocht

The verb moves to E in the case of (26b), but if there is no auxiliary, as in (23a), the verb and prefix move to the second position. This analysis is compatible with the ungrammaticality of (29).

As a reviewer points out, the movement of the verb adjoining to ge- in (27) and that adjoining to door in (31) would not be antisymmetric ones (as in Kayne 1994) since the verb would adjoin to the right of the element in E not to the left. The structure could be made anti-symmetric at some cost, for instance, by having the verb be in v and have ge- in (27) and the inseparable prefix in (31) adjoin to it instead. I won't pursue this.

As to the position of the object, as is well-known, Dutch (and German, Old English, and other) objects occur after the finite verb in the main clause but before the verb in the subordinate clause. For clauses with a finite and non-finite verb in the main clause, as in (32), and for subordinate clauses, as in (33), there will therefore have to be a position for the object dit geval `this case':

32. Ik heb dit geval uitgezocht

I have this case out-sorted

`I have examined this case'.

33. dat ik dit geval heb uitgezocht

that I this case have out-sorted

`that I have examined this case'.

There are numerous possibilities for a landing site of the object (e.g. Koster's 1999 AccP) even though the object would cross XP-positions. Locality never seems to be as strict with phrases (XPs) as with heads (Xs) and I assume Chomsky's (1995) position on having these positions equidistant.

To conclude this section, I have argued that the difference between separable and inseparable prefixes in Dutch is in the position they occupy in the tree. The former are merged in the specifier position of the inner aspect and therefore occur together with ge- in the head position. They can also be modified. The inseparable ones, in contrast, are merged in the head position of the inner aspect and when the verb moves, the verb has to move to this head first and take the prefix along in later movement. That the prefix is in the head position explains the complementary distribution with ge- and the impossibility to be modified.

Assuming these structures, English and Dutch are similar in using the EP for verbs indicating a perfective result. The differences consist in what occupies the specifier and head of EP: a DP in the specifier and a particle in the head in English, but a separable prefix in the specifier and either ge- or inseparable prefix in the Dutch head. However, one would like to know why the English particle does not occupy the specifier position of EP, like its Dutch counterpart. I'll now briefly discuss the gist of other accounts.

5 Other analyses

I will now compare the analysis in section 4 with some recently proposed ones, namely den Dikken (1992; 2003), vanden Wijngaarden (1996), and Zeller (2001). Some of these approaches have V-final structures, as e.g. Zeller. The main advantage of my analysis is the link to aspect.

Den Dikken (e.g. 1992 and 2003) considers the object and particle a complement of the verb. In 1992, he argues that particles are small clause (non-lexical) heads that with internal DP arguments. In 2003, he modifies this a little and proposes the below difference between separable and inseparable prefixes, (34a) and (34b) respectively, where XP is a functional projection:

34 a. VP b. VP

V XP V PrtP

. X' DP Prt

^ X PrtP

^ DP Prt

In (34ab), the DP is the complement of the particle which is counterintuitive since the DP and particle are not a constituent, as ungrammatical preposings such as (35) show for the inseparable prefix:

35. *[Het huis door] zoek ik

the house through search I

Vanden Wijngaarden (1996: 291) proposes a structure similar to (31) above, namely one where ge- and the particle are in the same position, but where the projection of which the particle is the head is a complement, as in (36):

36. .

V XP

(NP) .

X (YP)

ge

prtinsep

Vanden Wijngaarden's main interest involves the Verb Raising constructions. I'll come back to those in the next section.

Zeller (2001) provides a nice overview of how particle verbs have been discussed morphologically or syntactically and he provides a combined approach, namely that "a particle verb is a syntactic construction characterized by a local relation between the particle and the verb" (p. 297). Like others, he argues that the particle is a head whose projection is the complement of a V. His trees are given as (37):

37 a. VP b. VP

Spec V' Spec V'

PrtP V V

Prt Pref V

(Zeller 2001: 58-9)

Thus, previous analyses have in common that the particle is the head of a small clause complement that is itself the complement of the verb. My structures in (27) and (31) assume the particle is relevant to inner aspect instead, and that the object is an object of the verb. The advantage is that both separable and inseparable prefixes have a function relevant to inner aspect and that the object remains an object of the verb, not of the particle, as in e.g. den Dikken.

6 Verb Raising and some further questions

In this section, I look at Verb Raising constructions and their interaction with particles. I provide a possible analysis and point to some problems.

Verb raising is a phenomenon, first decribed by Evers (1975), where an infinitival object appears to the right of the verb whose object the infinitive is, unlike nominal objects which appear to the left. In (38), for instance, the infinitival opbellen `telephone' appears to the right of wil `want' (the object of the infinitive is hem `him' and it is separated from its verb by wil `want'):

38. dat ik hem wil opbellen

that I him want telephone

`that I want to call him'.

Assuming that Dutch is VO underlyingly, one could say that (38) is close to the underlying structure. Other variants of (38) include (39) and (40):

39. dat ik hem opbellen wil

that I him up-telephone want

40. dat ik hem op wil bellen

that I him up wil telephone

Zeller (2001) assumes a reanalysis of the verb and the particle in (38) and (39). An alternative is using an underlying structure as in (41), with the subject in the vP layer and the complementizer dat `that' in the CP, not shown here:

41. VP

. V'

V EP

. E'

E VP

wil op . V'

hem V ...

bellen

To derive (38) from (41), only the infinitival object hem `him' will have to move. In (39), the entire EP moves to the specifier preceding wil `want' (with subsequent movement of the object). The reason for EP movement would be a tense dependence on wil (see e.g. Stowell 1982). In (40), the particle in the specifier of EP moves, again for tense reasons.

Certain varieties of Dutch prefer one over the other, indicating speakers have internalized one rule over another, but all are acceptable. Zeller (2001: 301) cites some Afrikaans examples from an unpublished 1988 MA thesis by le Roux. These show that Afrikaans, otherwise very similar to Dutch in word order and particle behavior, does not have (40), or only marginally, as (42) shows:

42. ?omdat Jan haar op wou bel

because Jan her up wanted ring

`because Jan wanted to ring her'.

Within the framework sketched, it would mean that Afrikaans lacks the option of head movement and relies on phrasal movement.

For inseparable prefixes, the Dutch data are as follows:

43. dat de politie deze zolder wilde doorzoeken

that the police this attic wanted through-search

`that the police wanted to search this attic'.

44. dat de politie deze zolder doorzoeken wilde

that the police this attic through-search wanted

45. *dat de politie deze zolder door wilde zoeken

that the police this attic through wanted search

A tree of the underlying structure would be:

46. VP

. V'

V EP

wil . E'

E VP

door . V'

deze zolder V ...

zoeken

To derive (43), only the object would have to move, comparable to (38) above. Sentence (44) would be comparable to (39) with the EP moving (and subsequently the object). Sentence (45), the ungrammatical counterpart to (40), is impossible since the E head can't move to the specifier of VP.

Turning to the infinitival marker, unlike English to, an analysis of Dutch te and German zu is problematic (see Abraham 2004 for an analysis where te/zu and passive ge- pattern). There are many constructions where occurrence or non-occurrence is mysterious, e.g. after zitten in (47) and (48):

47. Hij zit te zeuren

he sits to fuss

`He is fussing'.

48. Het heeft geen zin om te zitten (*te) klagen

it has no sense for to sit to complain

`It is useless to be complaining'.

With prefixes there is another puzzle. One might expect te to pattern with ge-, but the data are as follows:

49. Ik probeerde hem op te bellen

I tried him up to call

`I tried to call him'.

50. Ik probeerde die zolder te doorzoeken

I tried that attic to search

`I tried to search that attic'.

In (49), the infinitival marker follows the prefix but precedes it in (50). Continuing to pursue a syntactic solution as in (27) and (31), one could argue that the separable prefix in (49) has to move to the specifier of te. I see no reason for that at the moment so I'll leave it for further reserach.

A last point I would like to examine is the direction of linguistic change where these aspectual prefixes are concerned.

7 Changes

In this section, I'll provide some examples of changes of Dutch aspectual prefixes and link those to the English examples we saw earlier. I also suggest a cycle of change and some principles governing it.

The reference grammar of Dutch by Geerts et al. (1984: 492) mentions that some inseparable prefixes can be separable in archaic use. Thus, Standard Modern Dutch has inseparable aanbeden `revered' and aanschouwd `looked at', whereas archaic Dutch has separable ones in aangebeden and aangeschouwd. Blom (2003) and Blom & Booij (2003) note the same. They provide a grammaticalization schema and argue certain separable prefixes become inseparable in Dutch. For instance, the separable over in (51) from Middle Dutch becomes inseparable in Modern Dutch (52) and is incompatible with ge as (53) shows:

51. mer tis een flaute die hem over ghecomen is

But it-is a swoon that him over come is

`But it is a swoon that has happened to him' (from Blom 2003: 33).

52. Hem overkwam een flauwte

Him happened a fainting-fit

`He fainted'.

53. Hem is een flauwte overkomen/*overgekomen

Him is a fainting-spell happened

`He fainted'.

If we look back at (27) and (31), it becomes clear that the change from (51) to (52) is from the specifier position that the separable prefix occupies to the head that the inseparable one is positioned in. In the history of English, as seen above, the prefixes are lost and replaced by adverbs. These adverbs might become specifiers (and then heads), as verbs such as outsource and download possibly show. The changes in Dutch (and English) are from specifier to head, which, as van Gelderen (2004) shows, is historically a frequent change. For instance, Jespersen's Cycle describes changes of a negative phrase such as nan wiht `no creature' in Old English to a head such as not/-n't in Modern English. Other such changes involve independent pronouns in the specifier of TP becoming agreement markers, as is happening in colloquial French with e.g. je `I' in (54), and being reinforced with new forms in the specifier, namely moi `me':

54. Moi, je le sais

I, I it know

`I know it'.

Evidence that je is a head is that it can no longer be coordinated and modified (see Lambrecht 1981).

This change from specifier to head has been formulated as an Economy Principle in the internal grammar of speakers by van Gelderen (2004): `be as minimal as you can'. It is a principle that applies whenever it can, so if a child is exposed to a construction that is ambiguous between using a specifier of a head, it will use the head. In the grammars of adults, it works as a guiding principle as well. If a pronoun is coordinated, it merges as a phrase but if it is not, it merges as a head.

The changes involving aspectual markers can be summarized as in figure 1:

___________________________________________________________________________

a. EP > b. EP

. E' . E'

E VP up E VP

(ge) . V' (ge) . V'

V AP V AP

up

c. EP

. E'

E VP

up . V'

V AP

___________________________________________________________________________

Figure 1: The Aspect Cycle

8 Conclusion

In this paper, I have provided an account for English particle verbs using inner aspect (EP). Particles and the objects of particle verbs play a crucial role in indicating perfectivity (and definiteness) and having either the particle head or the object move to the head of EP and specifier of EP respectively accounts for this relation. Historically, the particles come into being as reinforcements by adverbs.

Using the EP to represent inner aspect, I have claimed that separable and inseparable prefixes in Dutch are specifiers and heads of EP respectively. This explains a number of phenomena. (a) Verb-movement will `take along' the inseparable prefix since the verb has to move via the head position of the prefix not to violate relativized minimality. The separable prefix can be skipped by the verb since the prefix is in a specifier position. (b) If the inseparable prefix is in the head and if ge- is too, it makes sense they are in complementary distribution, unlike the separable ones. (c) Separable prefixes can be modified unlike the inseparable ones.

Section 5 reviews some previous analyses where aspect is not used. Section 6 reviews the behavior of prefixes in more complex constructions, verb raising and interaction with te. I point out some challenges for an(y) analysis. In section 7, it is shown that if the above analysis for Dutch separable and inseparable prefixes is correct, the historical changes receive a nice explanation under an Economy Principle that favors heads over specifiers. The reason is that change moves from separable to inseparable, i.e. from specifier to head. English can be seen to follow a similar pattern.

Notes

1 I will not go into other differences such as stress, but these data are compatible with my analysis: separable prefixes receive more stress since they are more lexical, indicated by their position in the specifier. Inseparable prefixes have no stress since they are grammatical categories.

2 This might be done through feature checking. Feature checking through AGREE, as in Chomsky (2001), has changed views on why elements move, and this needs to be rethought in general. I will therefore not be very specific on this question.

3 In (4), turn is in v but it could originate in V and move to v. In that case (4b)'s off would first move to V, then turn off would move to E and to v.

Abbreviations

A Adverb

ASP Aspect

BNC British National Corpus, see thetis.bl.uk for references

DOE Old English texts available in electronic form from University of Toronto

E Extent

HC Helsinki Corpus (see Kytö & Rissanen 1988)

PC Peterborough Chronicle (Thorpe's 1861 edition)

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