Demonstration of antecedent reactivation with the crossmodal priming paradigm. It was an absolute disgrace that, in gb and in minimalist circles, some were now using the term ergativity to refer to what relational grammarians such as david perlmutter had been call ing unaccusativity, and that, subsequently. While all languages can achieve the same basic communicative ends, they each use different means to achieve them, partic ularly in the divergent ways that syntax, semantics and prag matics interact across languages. Citeseerx scientific documents that cite the following paper. Lexical semantics looks at how the meaning of the lexical.
Do sentences with unaccusative verbs involve syntactic. Such interactions abound in natural language and can be found in all subsystems of the grammar. In modern linguistics, an unaccusative verb is an intransitive verb whose grammatical subject is not a semantic agent. Research on verbs and events in lexical semantics, generative semantics and theoretical syntax has converged. Pdf a semantic and syntactic analysis of break and bend. Lexical semantics also known as lexicosemantics, is a subfield of linguistic semantics. The role of lexical semantics in unaccusativeunergative distinction in turkish deniz zeyrek middle east technical university, ankara one of the approaches to understanding argument structure, lexical semantics, and verbal alternations is to presume that verbs belong to distinct classes. In this paper, we argue that this unaccusativity mismatch points to a syntactic. Pdf sentences without nominative subjects in japanese. Unaccusativity begins by isolating the semantic factors that determine whether a verb will be unaccusative or unergative through a careful examination of the behaviour of intransitive verbs from a range of semantic classes in diverse syntactic constructions. At the syntaxlexical semantics interface, linguistic inquiry monograph 26, mit press, cambridge, ma. Evaluating competing approaches by gisa rauh examines how diuerent linguistic theories characterize the relation between syntactic and semantic properties of words in the lexicon and beyond.
Reviewed by edwin williams, princeton university the most ambitious goal of work of this kind would be a linguistic theory in which different verb argument deployments would be fully predictable from. Concentrating on the lexical semantics of a verb and the syntactic structures it. This study examines the semantic as well as the syntactic analysis of these verbs of change of state in zulu. Semantically bend verbs are divided into verbs denoting the bending of body parts, e. At the syntaxlexical semantics interface, linguistic inquiry monographs 26, mit press, cambridge, massachusetts. The study of the syntaxsemantics interface is concerned with linguistic phenomena that are the product of interactions between principles of syntactic organization and principles of semantic interpretation. Language is a system of communication in which grammati cal structures function to express meaning in context. An unaccusative verbs subject is semantically similar to the direct object. Unaccusativity is an extended investigation into a set of linguistic phenomena that have received much attention over the last fifteen years. Alexiadou, artemis, anagnostopoulou, elena, and everaert, martin, 22 59. This paper argues that the unaccusativity mismatch observed in the literature concerning the availability of thereinsertion points to a syntactic difference between two classes of unaccusatives.
Cg 112 spring, 2006 outline and readings 5 zaenen, annie, unaccusativity in dutch. The semantic difference between sjasuffixed verbs and verbs with reflexive objects is. Traditionally, phenomena like word order, case marking, agreement, and the like are viewed as part of syntax, whereas things like the. The opening paper linguistic categories and the syntax semantics interface.
The descriptive definition of the unaccusative set. A semantics for unaccusatives and its syntactic consequences. Comparatives and superlatives at goal the syntaxsemantics. Coreference processing and levels of analysis in objectrelative constructions. Scalarity and unaccusativity at the lexiconsyntax interface thesis submitted for the degree doctor of philosophy by joseph potashnik. Levin, beth and malka rappaport hovav, unaccusativity. Besides providing extensive support for david perlmutters hypothesis that unaccusativity is syntactically represented but semantically determined, this monograph contributes significantly to the development of a theory of lexical semantic representation and to the elucidation of the mapping from lexical semantics. Lexical units make up the catalogue of words in a language, the lexicon. Polish psychological verbs at the lexiconsyntax interface in crosslinguistic perspective. Hyogo university of teacher education unaccusativity. More on events, word meaning, and argument structure april 27 may 2. Besides providing extensive support for david perlmutters hypothesis that unaccusativity is syntactically represented but semantically determined, this monograph contributes significantly to the development of a theory of lexical semantic representation and to the elucidation of the mapping from lexical semantics to syntax. At the syntaxlexical semantics interface linguistic inquiry monographs by beth levin, malka rappaport hovav and a great selection of related books, art and collectibles available now at.
Levin, beth and rappaport hovav, malka, unaccusativity. The units of analysis in lexical semantics are lexical units which include not only words but also subwords or subunits such as affixes and even compound words and phrases. At the syntax lexical semantics interface, mit press, 1995. Unaccusativity, at the syntaxlexical semantics interface. Besides providing extensive support for david perlmutters hypothesis that unaccusativity is syntactically represented but semantically determined. At the syntaxlexical semantics interface beth levin and malka rappaport hovav 1994 besides providing extensive support for david perlmutters hypothesis that unaccusativity is syntactically represented but semantically determined, this monograph contributes significantly to the development of a theory of lexical semantic representation and to. Pdf the phenomenon of unaccusativity is a central focus for the study of. He has published the semantics of locative prepositional phrases in english 1995, nary quantifiers and the.
Since transitive verbs necessarily have objects, a challenge for theories of transitivity is how to deal with the justmentioned problems involving the semantic correlates of objecthood. At the syntaxlexical semantics interface, linguistic inquiry monograph 26. It was an absolute disgrace that, in gb and in minimalist circles, some were now using the term ergativity to refer to what relational grammarians such as david perlmutter had been call ing unaccusativity. Unaccusativity at the syntaxlexical semantics interface. In other words, it does not actively initiate or is not actively responsible for the action of the verb. The subject of this study is break and bend verbs in isizulu, which can be classified as verbs of change of state.
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