scholarly journals On interpretation of resultatives with locative alternation verbs

2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 308
Author(s):  
Tsuneko Nakazawa
Keyword(s):  
Direct Object ◽  
Locative Alternation ◽  
Change Of State ◽  
Transitive Verbs ◽  
Corpus Data

Resultative phrases in Japanese are generally believed to be predicated of the object of transitive verbs just like English counterparts (e.g., I painted the car yellow). However, some exceptions are also known in which resultatives describe an oblique argument (e.g., otoko-wa kabe-ni penki-o akaku nutta ‘the man smeared paint on the wall (so that the wall became) red)'. Using BCCWJ-NT corpus data, this paper shows that resultatives with locative alternation verbs in Japanese are generally interpreted as description of the argument that is lexically specified to undergo a change of state, rather than of the direct object.

scholarly journals Semantics-oriented resultatives: Evidence from valency alternation verbs

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tsuneko Nakazawa ◽  
Rui Cao
Keyword(s):  
Mandarin Chinese ◽  
Lexical Semantics ◽  
Direct Object ◽  
Grammatical Function ◽  
Locative Alternation ◽  
Change Of State ◽  
Predication Relation

Resultative phrases are generally believed to conform to the Direct Object Restriction: that is, they describe the direct object if verbs are transitive. However, some exceptions have occasionally been reported, and this paper investigates the problem by focusing on resultative phrases that occur with the valency alternation verbs in Japanese and Mandarin Chinese. Verbs that license the locative alternation and locatum-subject alternation describe events that involve two arguments, the location and the locatum, which are perceived to concurrently undergo a change of state. It will be shown that resultative phrases with a valency alternation verb can be predicated of either argument regardless of whether it is expressed as direct object. Furthermore, resultative verbal suffixes in Mandarin, interpreted as description of either the location or the locatum, give rise to the locative alternation while their interpretation remains the same. Thus, it is claimed that in Japanese and Mandarin, the predication relation of resultative phrases is not determined by the grammatical function of arguments as generally believed, but rather by the lexical semantics of the verbs.

Indirect object in Manchu-Tungus languages: structural and semantic aspect (in the Orok language)

2020 ◽  
pp. 243-260
Author(s):  
L. V. Ozolinya ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Direct Object ◽  
Accusative Case ◽  
Indirect Object ◽  
Functional Aspects ◽  
Transitive Verbs ◽  
Object Composition ◽  
The Subject ◽  
First Time ◽  
Semantic Aspect ◽  
Trivalent Verbs

For the first time, the paper provides the analysis of the Oroc language object as a syntactic unit combining the semantic and functional aspects of transitive or non-transitive verbs. In the Manchu-Tungus languages, the object is found to be expressed in the morphological forms of the case: direct – in the accusative case and the possessive forms of the designative case, indirect – in the forms of oblique cases. Constructions with indirect objects, the positions of which are filled with case forms of nouns, designate the objects on which the action is aimed, objects from which the action is sent or evaded, objects-addresses, objectsinstruments, etc. Both transitive or non-transitive verbs can take the position of the predicate. The necessary (direct object) and permissible (indirect object) composition of objects in the verb is determined by its valences: bivalent verbs open subjective (subject) and objective (direct object) valences; trivalent verbs reveal subjective, subjective-objective (part of the subject or indirect subject) and objective (indirect object) valences.

scholarly journals Argument-Structure-Reducing Operations in Standard Arabic: An Exploratory Comparative Study

2018 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. p1
Author(s):  
Abdellatif ED-DARRAJI
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Study ◽  
Argument Structure ◽  
Subject Position ◽  
Direct Object ◽  
External Argument ◽  
Standard Arabic ◽  
Change Of State

This paper attempts to examine some argument-structure-reducing operations in Standard Arabic (SA for short). It is proposed here that some affixes (viz. prefixes and infixes) can decrease the argument structure (or valence) of the subclass of change-of-state (COS for short) verbs in the language under study. More specifically, these affixes function as unaccusativizers or decausativizers in that they can derive unaccusative COS verbs from causative COS verbs by suppressing the external argument of the latter verbs and syntactically promoting the direct object to subject position. Crucially, the ability of these affixes to affect the argument structure and the morphosyntactic realization of arguments is not limited to SA, but it has been attested in some other languages, such as Italian, Russian, Chichewa, Spanish, French, Eastern Armenian, West Greenlandic, and Tzutujil, among others.            

Priming semantic structure in Brazilian Portuguese

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jayden Ziegler ◽  
Rodrigo Morato ◽  
Jesse Snedeker
Keyword(s):  
Word Order ◽  
Syntactic Structure ◽  
Brazilian Portuguese ◽  
Semantic Structure ◽  
Structural Priming ◽  
Locative Alternation ◽  
Change Of State

Structural priming, the tendency for speakers to reuse previously encountered sentence structures, provides some of the strongest evidence for the existence of abstract structural representations in language. In the present research, we investigate the priming of semantic structure in Brazilian Portuguese using the locative alternation: A menina lustrou a mesa com o verniz “The girl rubbed the table with the polish” vs. A menina lustrou o verniz na mesa “The girl rubbed the polish on the table.” On the surface, both locative variants have the same syntactic structure: NP-V-NP-PP. However, location-theme locatives (“rub table with polish” describe a caused-change-of-state event, while theme-location locatives (“rub polish on table”) describe a caused-change-of-location event. We find robust priming on the basis of these semantic differences. This work extends our knowledge by demonstrating that semantic structural priming is not isolated to languages like English (e.g., satellite-framed with strict word order and limited inflection) but is present in a language with very different typological characteristics (e.g., verb-framed and richly inflected with subject dropping).

scholarly journals Is there really an aspectual se in Spanish?

2021 ◽  
Vol 55 (1) ◽  
pp. 195-230
Author(s):  
Carlota de Benito Moreno
Keyword(s):  
Reflexive Pronoun ◽  
Reflexive Pronouns ◽  
Transitive Verbs ◽  
Corpus Data ◽  
Larger Sample

Abstract The goal of this paper is to revisit the so-called aspectual se, frequently cited over the last three decades as a new function of reflexive pronouns in Spanish and other languages, which refers to facultative uses of the reflexive pronoun where it has no effect on the valency or diathesis of the verb. I will focus on four empirical problems that such accounts face when dealing with corpus data: the requirement of a delimited object for transitive verbs, the semantic implications of the aspectual function of the reflexive pronoun, the unacceptability of the reflexive pronoun with some predicates, and the fact that these accounts have ignored a number of predicates that also take this facultative reflexive pronoun. I argue that a larger sample of both contexts and verbs, obtained by exhaustively analyzing corpus data, is necessary to improve our understanding of these uses.

The locative alternation in verb-framed vs. satellite-framed languages

2014 ◽  
Vol 38 (4) ◽  
pp. 864-895 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wojciech Lewandowski
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Analysis ◽  
Argument Structure ◽  
Corpus Study ◽  
Token Frequency ◽  
Locative Alternation ◽  
Change Of State ◽  
Type Frequency ◽  
Verb Meaning

I propose a comparative analysis of the locative alternation in Polish and Spanish. I adopt a constructional theory of argument structure (Goldberg (1995)), according to which the locative alternation is an epiphenomenon of the compatibility of a single verb meaning with two different constructions: the caused-motion construction and the causative + with adjunct construction. As claimed by Pinker (1989), a verb must specify a manner of motion from which a particular change of state can be obtained in order to be able to appear in both constructional schemas. However, I show through a corpus study that the compatibility between verbal and constructional meaning is further restricted by Talmy’s (1985, 1991, 2000) distinction between verb-framed and satellite-framed languages. In particular, Talmy’s lexicalization patterns theory systematically explains why both the token frequency and the type frequency of the alternating verbs are considerably higher in Polish than in Spanish.

The Maturation of Grammatical Principles: Evidence from Russian Unaccusatives

2001 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-44 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maria Babyonyshev ◽  
Jennifer Ganger ◽  
David Pesetsky ◽  
Kenneth Wexler
Keyword(s):  
Young Children ◽  
Direct Object ◽  
Chain Formation ◽  
Unaccusative Verbs ◽  
Transitive Verbs ◽  
Direct Objects ◽  
A Chain ◽  
Genitive Case

This article tests the hypothesis that young children have a maturational difficulty with A-chain formation that makes them unable to represent unaccusative verbs in an adultlike fashion. We report the results of a test of children's performance on the genitive-of-negation construction in Russian, which, for adults, is an “unaccusativity diagnostic,” since genitive case is allowed to appear on the underlying direct object argument of unaccusatives as well as on direct objects of standard transitive verbs within the scope of negation. We show that although, Russian children know the properties of the construction, they have notable difficulty using it with unaccusative verbs. Since the input evidence for genitive of negation with unaccusative verbs is quite robust, we interpret our results as support for the hypothesis.

Light verbs as classifiers in Udi

Diachronica ◽  
2008 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
pp. 213-241 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alice C. Harris
Keyword(s):  
Directed Motion ◽  
Light Verbs ◽  
Second Stage ◽  
The Third ◽  
Light Verb ◽  
Change Of State ◽  
Third Stage ◽  
Transitive Verbs ◽  
The Subject

In Udi, most verbal lexemes are composed, in all tense-aspect-mood categories, of a light verb and an ‘initial’. It is argued here that in the first stage of this development, simplex verbs were juxtaposed with focused constituents. In the second stage, initials and verbs formed compounds, and this pattern spread beyond those that had once involved focus. In the third stage, the subject of this paper, light verbs become classifiers, classifying the verb type — inchoatives, other unaccusatives, unergatives, transitive verbs of inherently directed motion, transitive change-of-state verbs, other transitives. I argue also that the classes identified by (some of) the light verbs have not become less semantically motivated; rather the semantics has shifted from a relatively narrow meaning to one of the three major classes.

Basic valency orientation and the middle voice in Hittite

2012 ◽  
Vol 36 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-32 ◽  
Author(s):  
Silvia Luraghi
Keyword(s):  
Limited Extent ◽  
Original Function ◽  
Middle Voice ◽  
High Productivity ◽  
European Languages ◽  
Change Of State ◽  
Transitive Verbs ◽  
Intransitive Verbs ◽  
A Minor ◽  
Minor Pattern

This paper discusses basic valency orientation in Hittite, based on the typology proposed in Nichols et al. (2004). Verb pairs usually employed to test basic valency indicate the clearly transitivizing character of this language; a closer scrutiny of intransitive verbs further reveals the existence of a three-fold distinction featuring two intransitive verbs, a basic stative one (or an adjective), and an overtly marked intransitive change-of-state, in addition to a transitive counterpart overtly marked as causative. The high productivity of causative derivation is shown by the fact that morphologically marked causatives are not only derived from stative verbs, but also from telic intransitives and from transitive verbs. In the case of telic intransitive verbs, a minor pattern is also attested, whereby valency alternation is encoded through voice alternation, with intransitive forms inflected in the middle voice and transitive forms in the active. Since neither voice can be considered to be derived with respect to the other, verbs that display this behavior are indeterminate as to basic valency orientation. In spite of the limited extent to which voice indicates valency alternation, this finding becomes more significant when set into the framework of valency alternation in the early Indo-European languages, and sheds some light (or raises more questions) on the original function of the Hittite and of the Indo-European middle voice, a typologically puzzling category.

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