Selected Papers from the Fourteenth International ... - STIBA Malang

Particles as grammaticalized complex predicates 169
In particle verbs that result from a grammaticalization process of complex predicates,
it is the figure that becomes the fully affected object of the particle verb
combination; that figure traverses the path expressed by the particle.
. Grounds as fully affected objects
In addition to the figure of the path becoming the object, there is another pattern
in which it is the ground that surfaces as the object of the particle verb combination.
An example is (26), which was discussed by Denison (2004) as an example
of reanalysis: the preposition increasingly attaches itself to the verb, and its former
complement (the ground) becomes the object of the particle verb combination.
(26) My car ran over a bottle (lying in the road)
a. [ VP ran intr [ PP over [ NP a bottle]]]
b. [ VP ran trans [ part over] [ NP a bottle]] (Denison 2004: 18)
It is another resultative predicate pattern, with its unaccusative verb conforming to
the LCS in (16c), Goldberg and Jackendoff ’s noncausative path resultative. My car
is here the figure, and starts out initially as the object of the verb (because the verb
is an unaccusative). 7 The earliest literature on particle verbs mention the phenomenon
of object transfer (‘Subjektvertauschung’, ‘Objektvertauschung’: Hundsnurscher
1968: 124ff quoted in Lipka 1972: 94). Compare the object of the first and
second of the following pairs, of which the first one is the figure of the particle, but
the second one is the ground: water runs or pours out of the bucket, we brush the
lint off a coat, rinse the dirt off the plates.
(27) a. das Wasser läuft aus/der Eimer läuft aus (Lipka 1972: 94)
the water runs out/the bucket runs out
b. John poured out the water/John poured out the bucket (McIntyre 2001)
c. Clear out mud (from a river)/clear out a river (by removing mud)
(Lipka 1972: 94)
d. Brush the lint off/brush the coat off (Farrell 2004: 110)
e. Het vuil afspoelen/ de borden afspoelen (Blom 2005: 190)
the dirt off-rinse the plates off-rinse
‘rinse off the dirt’ ‘rinse off the plates’
Synchronic similarities point to an affinity between particles and predicates. Could
they point to a diachronic relationship? We will now look at the situation in earlier
English.
7. The causative variant would be I ran my car over a bottle.