Syntax and Semantics of Telicizing Light Verbs in Hill Mari and Poshkart Chuvash

This work has two aims. The first is to build event structure models of Hill Mari complex predicates that are made with telicizing light verbs keäš ‘to go’, koltaš ‘to send’, šə̈nzäš ‘to sit’, šə̈ndäš ‘to seat’, and šuaš ‘to throw’. These models are supposed to predict both selection restrictions of the light verbs and semantics of the complex predicates. The second aim is to compare the behavior of Hill Mari complex predicates with its Chuvash analogues: there are synonymous light verbs kaj ‘to go’, jar ‘to send’, pərak ‘to throw’ and lart ‘to seat’. This comparison is supposed to make the first step to understand which properties of complex predicates are universal and which are language-specific. To aim both goals, I used the literature about complex predicates in both languages and data from articles, texts and corpora. However, I collected the majority of the used examples in my own three expeditions in Hill Mari (2017—2018) and one expedition in Chuvash (2018). As a result, I managed to define the event structure of all of Hill Mari light verbs. As I expect, these models could explain both selection restrictions of the light verbs and the semantics of complex predicates. I also managed to build a syntactic model that explains the derivation of the complex predicates. I suppose that the conjunction of association of the light verb and the lexical verb happens in a special projection IdentP, between VoiceP and initP. It means that the complex predicate comes into being after the event structure derivations, but before the addition of an external argument. Finally, we compared Hill Mari and Chuvash systems of complex predicates and concluded that they work similar in general, but differ interestingly in details. The differences relate to the distribution of the light verbs with lexical meaning GO and SEND, as well as semantics and distributional potency of the light verbs with lexical meaning THROW.