Melody Violine

• Violine, Melody (2023). Resultatives and Event Interpretation. Full text in Research Archive
• Violine, Melody (2023). Verbal Extended Projection and Event Interpretation in Derived Nominals. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Borer (2014) assumes that AS-nominals (for derived nominals with argument structure) and R-nominals (for referential nominals) have a distinct internal syntax; the former has a verbal extended projection which licenses both an event interpretation and event arguments, while the latter does not. Indonesian, however, has a deverbal nominal construction that seems to have a verbal extended projection which does not license an event interpretation. Based on this, I argue that R-nominals can have a verbal extended projection and that an event interpretation is not licensed by a verbal extended projection. Instead, there is a projection above NP, NeventP, which licenses an event interpretation.

• Violine, Melody (2023). The Syntax of Event Nominalizations in Indonesian. Full text in Research Archive
• Violine, Melody (2023). The Incorporation of Covert Arguments in Indonesian Verbs. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Indonesian verbal affixes determine the number of arguments that a verb takes, such as a verb containing the prefix meng- which typically has two arguments. In (1) meminum, which consists of the prefix meng- and minum “to drink”, has anak “child” and susu “milk” as its arguments. This pattern indicates that argument structure is defined syntactically, marked by verbal affixes. However, there are counterexamples that do not fit this rule. For instance, in (2), merokok (meng- + rokok “cigarette”) only has one argument Bapak “Father”. This paper explains how the incorporation of an argument to the verb (cf. Baker, 1988) makes the argument covert, resulting in verbs like merokok which seem to only have one argument. Once the covert argument is accounted for, the counterexamples are apparent and the claim that argument structure is defined in the syntax stands.

• Violine, Melody & Fábregas, Antonio (2021). Argument structure and morphological marking in Indonesian: A research on verbalisations and its consequences for nominalisations. UiT Norges arktiske universitet. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  This thesis aims at providing an analysis of the mapping between the morphological marking and argument structure in Indonesian, studying the role that the verbal prefixes and suffixes use in the standard variety of this language play in defining syntactic configurations that support the presence of arguments. Secondarily, the thesis also discusses how nominalisation of the relevant verb classes affects argument structure. The theory used use in this research is Ramchand’s (2008 and 2018) theory of morphosyntax-semantics interface. Based on the five verbal affixes investigated in this research (meng-, ber-, ter-, meng-kan, meng-i), I claim that these verbal affixes have syntactically predictable effects in terms of their argument structure and the main properties that they impose on the verbs they build. I also have argued that they are projected in different areas of the verb. The prefixes meng-, ber-, and ter- are projections of the head Evt, while the suffixes -kan and -i are projections of the head Appl. Concerning the argument structure of verbs preserved in Indonesian nominalisations, the discussion was preliminary. I have provided arguments that the nominal structure of deverbal nominalisations involve at least two layers. The lower layer is NP, which is projected immediately above EvtP, where the agentive prefix ke- or [-Voice] is spelled out. The second layer called NeventP is projected above the first NP where the eventive suffix -an is spelled out. However, despite the syntactic approach adopted in this research, there are some aspects of the analysis that seem to be lexical instead of syntactic, including spanning and head movement which are inherently lexical.

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