Séminaire de Recherche en Linguistique

Ritter & Wiltschko (2009, 2014a, b) and Wiltschko 2014 advance the hypothesis that Universal Grammar provides a set of hierarchically-organized, abstract categories that are defined by their interpretive function, and that cross-linguistic variation derives from differences in the specific substantive content that is associated with these functionally-defined categories. Focusing on Blackfoot, we have argued that some of the unusual grammatical properties of this language are due to the fact that INFL is specified for interpretable person, rather than tense features, and that I-Asp (Inner Aspect) is specified for the feature [animate], rather than [bounded].

In this presentation I propose that uninterpretable selectional features constitute a second source of variation. I argue that in Blackfoot the functional categories that represent event structure components (i.e. Voice, Appl, I-Asp) all have an uninterpretable [m] feature, indicating that they select arguments that denote mental state holders (cf. Reinhart 2002).  I show that this proposal elegantly accounts for a number of unusual properties of the event structure in Blackfoot, including the fact that causers and agents alike must be mental state holders, and the fact that there appears to be no distinction between anti-causative and stative eventualities.