Having Need and Needing Have in Contemporary Indo-European * Stephanie Harves and Richard S. Kayne Abstract This paper begins by pointing out a new generalization regarding the distribution of transitive need throughout Indo-European. It is shown that only those Indo-European languages that have a transitive verb have used to express possession (i.e., HAVE- languages) may also have a transitive verb need. No Indo-European BE-language has a transitive verb need. In light of this generalization, we argue for a Hale and Keyser (1993)-style incorporation approach, whereby nominal need incorporates to an unpro- nounced verb HAVE, yielding transitive verbal need. 1 Introduction In his discussion of counterparts of have and be within Slavic, Isaˇ cenko (1974: 75) raises the following insightful question, "Could it be sheer coincidence that those Slavic languages which have become H(ave)-languages...have some modal verbs which are unknown to Rus- sian, a B(e)-language?" In this paper we argue, in the spirit of Hale and Keyser (1993, 2002) and Noonan (1993), that this is no coincidence, at least for the modal verb need. In our analysis below we attempt to account for the cross-linguistic facts at issue in terms of an incorporation approach to verbal need that involves a silent HAVE. 1 We will use the informal term H-language to mean a language that has a close overt counterpart of English have, in the sense of having an overt verb expressing ordinary predic- ative possession (as in Mary has a new car, Mary has two brothers), such that the possessor has nominative Case and the possessee is a direct object (with accusative Case and no pre- position). A B-language will then be taken to mean a language that lacks a close counterpart of have and expresses ordinary possession using some counterpart of be. We will broaden the investigation, relative to Isaˇ cenko’s, by attempting to take into account all of Indo-European. (It goes without saying that we will be able to touch upon only a small sample of Indo-European languages.) Strikingly, the sort of generalization he had in mind for Slavic appears to be tenable for Indo-European as a whole. We state our expanded generalization as follows: (1) All Indo-European languages that have a transitive verb corresponding to need are H-languages. Put another way, B-languages do not have transitive need. By transitive here, we mean (as above for have) a verb taking a nominative subject and an accusative direct object (with no preposition). * This paper is a revised version of a manuscript written in 2008. Another version of this paper that extends beyond Indo-European is to appear in Linguistic Inquiry. 1 Full capitals for a word or morpheme will be used to indicate a silent counterpart. NYU Working Papers in Linguistics (NYUWPL) 3, 47-68. Edited by Neil Myler and Jim Wood. c  2011 Stephanie Harves and Richard S. Kayne