Excessive events : The syntax and semantics of OVER-modification in Icelandic

Abstract

This article presents a detailed semantic and accompanying syntactic analysis of predicates denoting events that we describe as ‘excessive’ in Icelandic. Icelandic uses two types of strategies for marking of excess, the preposition yfir complemented by a reflexive pronoun or anaphor (e.g., Sara bakaði yfir sig ‘Sara baked too much’), and the verbal prefix of- (e.g., Sara of-bakaði kökuna ‘Sara over-baked the cake’). We argue that the former strategy expresses excess relative to the external argument, while the latter strategy expresses excess relative to the internal argument. We illustrate how the semantics of such predicates can be analysed using standard semantic approaches to degree predicates with some extensions, and how a decompositional approach to morphosyntax such as Distributed Morphology can capture these distinctions in a conceptually appealing way, with a plausible account of the syntax-semantics interface.