Factivity alternation: A case study on Bangla attitude verb 'bhab-'
Arka Banerjee
August 2024 

This paper questions the idea which tells us that factivity is directly exported/solely derived from verbs. In support of this, it picks up a Bangla attitude verb, viz. 'bhab-' (= 'think') which displays factivity alternation - it shows both factive REMEMBER/RECALL and non-factive THINK readings based on the type of the complement it combines with. It turns out to be factive with a gerundial DP, while it is not factive with finite clauses across the board. Bangla has two sorts of finite clauses in non-matrix positions which are as follows: the nominal-like je-clause and the adverbial-like bole-clause. With the former type, this attitude verb may have a RECALL reading depending on the context while with the second type, it is always THINK. We argue that the RECALL reading comes to the fore when the Theme or internal argument of the attitude verb in concern always pre-exists the matrix event, otherwise, THINK reading is available only. While hunting for the source of factivity of 'bhab-' with gerundial complements, we argue that gerundial complements with 'bhab-' always pre-exist the matrix event and compose with it as its Theme argument directly, yielding a factive interpretation. With adverbial bole-clauses, no factive inferences are derived because we argue that they only modify the eventuality argument of 'bhab-'. On the other hand, a je-clause, we argue, composes with 'bhab-' by restricting its object. Merely restricting the Theme does not tell us anything about getting factive inferences. But when factivity arises with a je-clause embedded by 'bhab-', we argue that the complement is a DP, not a CP, (i) whose nominal slot is occupied by a null fact-denoting entity that the je-CP modifies, and (ii) which always pre-exists the starting point of the matrix event. In this paper, we analyze the concerned transitive attitude verb adopting a Landman (1996, 2000)-style verbal denotation where both object and subject are mapped onto the set of events.

Format:	[ pdf ]
Reference:	lingbuzz/008238 (please use that when you cite this article)
Published in:	Draft accepted in Italian Journal of Linguistics
keywords:	: factivity, attitude verb, gerund, classifier, je-clause, bole-clause, situation semantics, bangla
previous versions:	v2 [July 2024] v1 [May 2024]
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