3. Semantics of Khoekhoe reciprocal constructions

Despite the ongoing interest in reciprocal situations, which form a central part of our social, intellectual, and moral lives, and the linguistic encoding of such situations in different languages, studies of reciprocals in Papuan languages remain underrepresented in the reciprocal literature. The Trans New Guinea languages Mian, Amele, and Hua have a reciprocal construction in which the reciprocal subevents are expressed by individual transitive verbs plus an existential verb expressing that the reciprocal action is done together. Mian goes one step further and fuses this construction into a single verb with a reciprocal suffix -sese. The present paper is an in-depth analysis of the morphology, syntax, and semantics of reciprocal constructions in Mian, including a comparison with Amele, and an analysis of the diachronic development of the Mian reciprocal, whose origin presumably lies in a biclausal description in which the reciprocal subevents are spelled out separately and sequentially.

ABSTRACT: One of the main objectives of valency lexicons is to identify predicate argument structures evoked by verbs. The analysis used in these resources heavily rests on lexical semantics and as such provides an accurate description of event structure in cases in which a verb is used in its prototypical sense, such as when the verb kick is used as a force verb in the example He kicked the door . However, this approach to event structure representation proves inadequate for examples in which a verb is used in a non-prototypical sense in which additional event participants are evoked constructionally, such as the use of kick in a transfer event: He kicked him the ball . In this paper, we propose a two-tier representation of event structure in which lexical semantics and the semantics of argument structure constructions are dealt with independently. We present a detailed model of constructional analysis that is compatible with lexically based analyses of event structure used in valency lexicons, such as Propbank, and show that a mapping between lexical and constructional representations provides a more comprehensive understanding of the event semantics when compared to a lexical representation alone.

In this paper we investigate the constructions that are used to encode reciprocal situations in English, based on responses to the 64 reciprocals videoclips developed for the Reciprocals Across Languages project (Evans et al. 2004). This work complements the extensive body of previous research on English reciprocals by focusing on spoken data. While our data supports the traditional view of each other as the primary and most common reciprocal construction in English, we find a greater degree of variation in construction types than this traditional view might suggest. Furthermore, we show that each other does not have the same degree of acceptability with all reciprocal situation types.

Addresses the role of structure in semantic analysis from the perspective of theories of meaning using rich theories of types. Also relates the theory of frames to these type theories as introducing, to some extent, similar structure into semantic analysis. The authors show how a structured approach is necessary to appropriately analyse phenomena in areas as diverse as lexical semantics and the semantics of attitudinal constructions referring to psychological states. In particular, these are: polysemy taken together with copredication, and attitudes such as belief and knowledge. The authors argue that the very same structure required to define a rich system of types enables them to adequately analyse both of these phenomena, thus revealing similarities in two otherwise apparently unrelated topics in semantics. They also argue that such theories facilitate a semantic theory oriented towards a psychological and contextually situated view of meaning. This title is also available as open access on Cambridge Core.

Hebrew Studies 48 (2007) 359 Reviews Indeed, verse 11a conveys both the explicit subject and the inceptive action from which the content of verse 11b flows (cf. Isa 35:10 at p. 74). Also note that, despite Garr’s translation, the prefixed verb in 11b comes at the end of its clause: literally, “About what I do not know they question me” (yˆn…wlDaVvˆy). Is the paragogic nun at the beginning of this verse in some way motivated by the nun of the object suffix at its end? Finally, Garr’s evaluation of the paragogic nun as “semantically nondesiderative” (p. 71) seems overly restrictive given his consideration a page before of nonindicative NE;tˆy_yIm syntagms . Rather than claim that “the desiderative frame overrides the epistemic mood” (p. 70), it might be more accurate to evaluate the paragogic nun verbs as modally neutral (perhaps even as modally unmarked, should the Biblical Hebrew verb system here manifest structuralized oppositions). Paul Korchin University of Alaska, Northwest Campus Nome, AK 99762 korchin@post.harvard.edu A NEW UNDERSTANDING OF THE VERBAL SYSTEM OF CLASSICAL HEBREW: AN ATTEMPT TO DISTINGUISH BETWEEN SEMANTIC AND PRAGMATIC FACTORS. By R. J. Furuli. Pp. 508. Oslo: Awatu Publishers, 2006. Paper, 300 NOK. $47.00. In this volume Furuli proposes an entirely new definition of Hebrew verbal aspect. He theorizes that aspect is a function of the interaction of event time, reference time, and the deictic center of events. According to Furuli, event time is “the time from the beginning to the end of an event. This time is non-deictic, because it is not seen in relation to a certain vantage point.” In reference time “the reporter in a way intersects event time and make (sic) a part of event time visible.” Finally, the deictic center is “the vantage point from which an event is seen” (pp. 471–472). This new definition is the result of an analysis of 79,574 verbal forms, in which Furuli seeks to make a strict distinction between semantic (uncancellable ) meaning and conversational pragmatic implicature, or meaning in context. Furuli’s methodological approach is corpus-based. The corpus includes the entire text of the Tanakh, samples from the Dead Sea Scrolls, Ben Sira, and Inscriptions. Furuli detects no change in the semantic meaning of the verbal forms across these texts. Additionally, the corpus includes prose, poetry , and prophetic literature. He observes that semantic meaning of the ver- Hebrew Studies 48 (2007) 360 Reviews bal forms is not affected by genre. Furuli’s distinction between semantic and pragmatic factors results in a redefinition of aspect. He states: The imperfective aspect is a close-up view of a small section of the event where the progressive action is made visible. The perfective aspect is a view, as if from some distance, of a greater part of, or of the whole event, where progressive action is not made visible. (p. 69) While other linguistic studies of Biblical Hebrew offer similar definitions of aspect (e.g., John Cook, “The Hebrew Verb: A Grammaticalization Approach,” ZAH 14 [2001]: 124), Furuli concludes that wayyiqtol is among the imperfective forms, along with yiqtol and weyiqtol, while qatal and weqatal represent the perfective forms. This is, perhaps, the most challenging aspect of the volume. In the first chapter, Furuli presents a review of previous scholarship, analysing the views of various scholars based upon the number of conjugations employed and their meaning. He differentiates between four component models, two component models, tense-based models, aspect-based models, models in which waw is viewed as more than a conjunction and models in which waw is viewed as a normal conjunction. He notes that contemporary scholarship acknowledges four conjugations and various combinations of tense and aspect based understandings. In the second chapter, Furuli presents his view of meaning in language, which is based upon Ogden’s triangle of signification: concept, word, and reference (p. 27). His approach is based upon lexical semantics in that each verb has a lexical meaning and an aktionsart, based upon the Vendlerian categories of state, activity, accomplishment, and achievement (see Z. Vendler, “Verbs and Time,” Philosophical Review 56 [1957]: 143–160). For Furuli, uncancellable semantic features include...

Construction of Lexical Semantics and Its Structural Analysis

In the previous chapters, more than 80 different dependency classes are introduced and considered. In /THAL 86/, more than 600 different references to papers on dependency theory are given. By some authors it was noticed that dependency theory is in a chaotic state. This book should be understood as an attempt to present the most important results on dependency theory. The usefulness of such a great number of different constraints is an open problem. But the variety can be explained as follows: 1 Each new type represents a certain type of semantic constructions. 2 Many types are connected with normalization and decomposition theory of databases. 3 Some types are generalizations of the previous ones. 4 Some types are introduced as special tools for manipulation and control of data. 5 Some types improve the utilization of projections of relations or of partition of relations.

Artykuł dotyczy relacji między formą konstrukcji, w której pojawiają się rzeczowniki oznaczające emocje, a konceptualizacją metaforyczną tych emocji w języku czeskim. Koncentruję się na wybranych rzeczownikach oznaczających emocje negatywne (vztek ‘wściekłość’, zlost ‘złość’, hněv ‘gniew’, amok ‘amok’, strach ‘strach’, úzkost ‘niepokój’, panika ‘panika’, nelibost ‘uraza’, nechuť ‘niechęć’) oraz na czasownikach, z którymi mogą być łączone w funkcji podmiotu lub dopełnienia (oraz marginalnie i innych typów). Zostały zidentyfikowane zgodności w preferowanych typach konstrukcji dla danych emocji, w repertuarze używanych czasowników oraz w metaforach powiązanych. Jednak wyniki można wyjaśnić za pomocą procesów metaforycznych lub czynników semantycznych, takich jak intensywność lub „aktywność” emocji tylko częściowo. Artykuł łączy teorię walencyjną z kognitywnym podejściem do języka i jest oparty na danych z synchronicznego korpusu pisanego języka czeskiego SYN2015.