Jonathan Crum LIN6520 Dr.

Eric Potsdam Syntax of the Eastern Armenian Auxiliary Clitic Eastern Armenian (hereafter Armenian) is a dialect of the Armenian language spoken within the Republic of Armenia, a mountainous nation situated between Turkey, Russia, Azerbaijan, and Iran. Armenian is an Indo-European language spoken by approximately 5.8 million speakers (Armenia and the diaspora) 1, and all dialects together form their own branch of Indo-European languages. Research into the syntax of Armenian has historically been sparse at best, but more recently, many phonologists and syntacticians have been looking more into Armenian linguistics. Within the domain of syntax, one topic of great interest and only moderate attention is the question of the verbal auxiliary. Armenian verbs are suffixed to indicate mood and aspect features, but tense, number, and person are reflected in a separate word that appears in most indicative tenses. This verbal auxiliary is also utilized as a copula. Linguists such as Karine Megerdoomian, Arsalan Kahnemuyipour, and Armine Tamrazian have addressed the issues surrounding this structure through both syntactic and phonological investigations. Nonetheless, questions still exist. I will therefore explicate the data surrounding this auxiliary and discuss exactly why its syntax is
1 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_Armenian

notable. I will also attempt to offer some form of analysis for this structure, although, as will be shown, there are a few remaining questions that are not entirely within the scope of this discussion that would warrant future inquiry. 1 Special Clitics Per the classification of clitics by Arnold Zwicky2, the Armenian verbal auxiliary is what is known as a special clitic, or a clitic that has special syntax. Simple clitics, such as English -'s, display typical syntactic properties. That is, they generally follow the same distribution as the full lexeme of which they are a reduced form. Like all clitics, special clitics are not accented (do not carry primary stress), but unlike these simple clitics, they might undergo movement in relation to other parts of a syntactic structure. Many different approaches have been taken in determining the nature of clitics with such special syntax ranging from phonological explanations to full morphological and syntactic theories. I argue that the special syntactic constituency relationships formed by special clitics in the sytax with other objects is reason enough to attempt a wholly syntactic analysis. The Armenian verbal auxiliary is notable in that it exists in its full form as a verbal copula, corresponding to to be in English, but serves a number of other features such as focus marking and, in the case of this clitic construction, as a marker of person and number in indicative tenses. The verb appears superficially to be dislocated from its

Zwicky, Arnold M. 1977. On Clitics. Bloomington: Indiana University Linguistics Club.

typical syntactic position to a new position in the utterance, the exact position and nature of this movement to be determined. 3 Armenian Data3 In order to understand the nature of the clitic, some basic facts about its distribution must be provided. Kahnemuyipour and Megerdoomian (hereafter K&M) observe several relationships the auxiliary serves with other parts of the structure that are indicative of a large amount of movement, the motivations of which are unclear. As mentioned previously, the Armenian auxiliary is a marker of tense, person, and number in most indicative tenses (particularly the present and future tenses). It works with verbs inflected for different aspects and moods to create compound tenses. For the sake of space, the data have been truncated to only show the third-person singular form of the auxiliary. (1) a. Ara-n yerkh-um Ara-DEF sing-PROG 'Ara is singing / sings.' Ara-n yerkh-um Ara-DEF sing-PROG 'Ara was singing / sang.' Ara-n yerkh-el Ara-DEF sing-PERF 'Ara has sung.' Ara-n yerkh-el Ara-DEF sing-PERF 'Ara had sung.' Ara-n yerkh-elu Ara-DEF sing-FUT e
AUX/3SG.PR

b.

er
AUX/3SG.PST

c.

e
AUX/3SG.PR

d.

er
AUX/3SG.PST

e.
3

e
AUX/3SG.PR

From Kahnemuyipour, Arsalan and Karine Megerdoomian. 2008. Second Position Clitics in the vP Phrase The Case of the Armenian Auxiliary. LSA 2008. Chicago.

f.

'Ara will / is going to sing.' Ara-n yerkh-elu er Ara-DEF sing-FUT AUX/3SG.PST 'Ara was going to sing.'

K&M go on to outline the positional distribution of this auxiliary with respect to other items in the syntax such as manner adverbs, non-specific direct objects (and specific direct objects, discussed later), as well as verbs and their preverbal components. The following facts demonstrate the distribution. (2) a. Ara-n arag e vaz-um Ara-DEF fast AUX/3SG.PR run-PROG 'Ara is running / runs fast.' The manner adverb immediately precedes the auxiliary. Ara-n girkh e a-el Ara-DEF book AUX/3SG.PR buy-PERF 'Ara has bought a book / books.'

b.

*Ara-n girkh a-el e Ara-DEF book buy-PERF AUX/3SG.PR The non-specific direct object immediately precedes the auxiliary. Note that it is ungrammatical for the verb to precede the auxiliary with a non-specific object present. c. Ara-n vaz-um e Ara-DEF run-PROG AUX/3SG.PR 'Ara is running / runs.' The verb immediately precedes the auxiliary. Ara-n nkar mez chuych e tal-u Ara-DEF picture us demonstration AUX/3SG.PR give-FUT 'Ara will show us a picture.' The preverbal element of chuych tal meaning literally 'to give demonstration' immediately precedes the auxiliary.

d.

With these data in mind, we are now equipped to understand the analysis

proposed by K&M 2008 which attempts to explain these distributional facts. 4 Auxiliary is a 2P clitic in vP Kahnemuyipour and Megerdoomian's go on to provide a precedence relation that generalizes the above facts. Precedence Relation: manner adverb > non-specific object > preverb > verb Essentially, if a manner adverb is present, it will take the position immediately preceding the auxiliary. If there is no adverb but a non-specific object, the object takes the position immediately preceding the auxiliary, and so forth. K&M take this empirical observation and propose that the auxiliary follows the highest constituent in the vP domain4 for which they provide the following chart. [vP manner-adverb [vP aux DO-NSP Preverb Verb ] DO-NSP aux Preverb Verb ] [vP Preverb aux Verb ] [vP Verb aux ]

The above data provide a compelling account for the distribution of the auxiliary to various possible elements one might see in the vP domain. Whatever the highest constituent is in that domain, we expect to find the auxiliary as a second-position clitic within vP. As Kahnemuyipour and Megerdoomian themselves point out, this is not terribly different from a clitic of the second-position in CP type discussed by Zwicky. K&M propose, then, that the auxiliary is a special clitic that moves from some
4 Kahnemuyipour and Megerdoomian 2008, page 8.

other location in the syntax. The auxiliary clitic then attracts the closest element to act as the host of the clitic. XP hosts (objects, manner adverbs) move to spec, vP, and X0 hosts (preverbs, verbs) adjoin directly to v. Finally, their analysis provides the following schematicized account of the applicable movements5.

All in all, this seems like a reasonable account, but there are many new questions that come out of this structure. As a final note regarding the data and analysis provided by K&M 2008, the implication of their paradigm is that, while non-specific direct objects are within the vP domain, specific direct objects are not. They argue that Armenian has two object positions based on the empirical fact. 5 Questions and Possible Analyses The account provided by Kahnemuyipour and Megerdoomian 2008 is compelling in that it takes strong empirical data and lays a minimalistic framework for a clitic-based explanation for the auxiliary's distribution. Starting with the assumption that the auxiliary is a second-position clitic in the vP domain is a good first step, but there are
5 Kahnemuyipour and Megerdoomian 2008, page 9.

many other aspects of a full analysis that are simply not present in the current exposition. In short, the analysis raises more questions than it answers, but perhaps this is not a difficult matter to resolve. Although previous discussions have worked within an X-bar framework, my analysis from here will rely on bare phrase structure and Minimalist conceptions of syntactic theory. 5.1 The Category of the Auxiliary One particular question not fully addressed is what category the auxiliary actually is, and the simplest answer would be that it is simply a verb that moves into the v domain. There is strong support for this in the simple fact that the auxiliary often acts as a clitic and has an infinitival verbal form, lin-el (be-INF), that is involved in many varying compound verbal constructions. To justify this typology, unaccusative constructions give some insight. (3) mi hat tuph e one CL box AUX/3SG.PR 'a box has arrived' hasel arrive-PERF

In this structure, the grammatical subject mi hat tuph is base generated as the

complement to the verb hasel and moves to spec,T through unaccusative advancement. Because the verb is unaccusative, we would not expect there to be any v domain above V. It is therefore reasonable to assume that the auxiliary is a verb itself that remains insitu in such a derivation as there is no place for it to move. 5.2 Movement Licensing The next gap in the current analysis of this clitic auxiliary is what precisely motivates the movement from the V0 position to v0. It might be reasonable to believe that v0 itself has some strong feature in Armenian that requires the auxiliary to move into a checking configuration, adjoining with the v0 head. This is not unusual if we look at the behavior of the copula in English. Medial adverb facts demonstrate that to be moves from V0 to T0. Since such adverbs are shown to sit at the left periphery of v, such movement creates a word order like John is always good and not *John always is good. We can use similar facts to show that the auxiliary moves from some lower position to a position that is higher but still beneath the left periphery of v, such as the v0 head itself. (4) Ara-n mit Ara-DEF always 'Ara is always good.' lav e good AUX/3SG.PR

It becomes clear, then, that the auxiliary is moving no higher than v0. This segues into the next major concerns which are the questions of the precise configuration of the auxiliary clitic and its host at v0 as well as how the clitic host itself is motivated to move from its base-generated position.

5.3 Configuration at v0 As we have determined that the auxiliary indeed moves from V0 to v0, the question is, what does it look like once it lands? The movement of an entire phrasal complement is simple enough as we know that it would move to spec,v. However, the structure resultant from two movements to the v head is slightly more complex. Going back to the data in (4), let us look at its actual derivation. (4) Ara-n mit Ara-DEF always 'Ara is always good.' lav e good AUX/3SG.PR

In order for this structure to be possible, we must rely on the mechanics extant in the current MERGE function within bare phrase structure syntax. First, the auxiliary dislocates from its base-generated position to MERGE with v0. Following this, something about this new structure requires that the adjective complement (or whatever the closest applicable host happens to be) dislocates from its own position and then undergoes

MERGE

with this structure. The entire structure now undergoes MERGE with the V

domain. I suggest that all of this is wholly feasible within the current Minimalist framework. 6 Unresolved Issues Having resolved the issues of the category of the auxiliary, the motivation of its movement, and the configuration of its landing site, there are still a couple of problematic aspects to the analysis. The generalization of the precedence relation provides strong evidence that there is a specific ordering of elements within the v domain at the moment when the auxiliary targets a host, but what occurs before this is unclear. Rather, it is not clear whether this ordering of elements represents basegenerated structures or post-movement configurations. This is especially important in to the analysis of the auxiliary due to the fact that this precedence relation is directly implicated in what K&M 2008 defines as the element closest to the auxiliary being attracted as the clitic host. Since there is no analysis of what close means in this framework, it is not clear how the auxiliary actually attracts its host. Kahnemuyipour and Megerdoomian suggest that the data indicate two object positions in Armenian yet do not discuss what these positions might be other than stating that the non-specific object is within the v domain, and the specific object is external to the v domain. A much more detailed analysis of the basic structures involved and the movements throughout the derivation might provide more insight to this

question. I was unable to develop a successful analysis of this, although it seems to suggest that the specific direct object either moves to some position higher than the v domain, or it is base-generated in that position. Future research would be required. 7 Conclusions From the empirical facts posited by Kahnemuyipour and Megerdoomian 2008 and other sources on the syntax of Armenian, it has been suggested that the auxiliary is a case of second-position clitic at the v domain. Beginning from this assumption, many of the issues surrounding the nature of this clitic can be rather easily resolved. However, there is still much room for more advanced syntactic analysis of the clitic and the structures involved in its movement and clitic hosting. Questions relating to the orientation of direct objects and their movements are especially interesting to further inquiry. Notably, this analysis sought to resolve the questions of what category the auxiliary ultimately is, from where it moves to become a clitic, the motivation of its movement, and the configuration of the landing site and single head hosts that move to it. This is far from a complete picture, but this fills in some of the larger gaps in a second-position at v analysis of the Eastern Armenian verbal auxiliary.