Compositional Incrementality Based on Polish Reveal-Type Verbs and Verbal Nouns

This paper deals with two Spanish prefixation processes, namely auto- and co- prefixation, which affect the participants in the event expressed by the verbal bases to which they apply. From our point of view, these two prefixation processes provide new evidence for the claim that it is necessary to distinguish two levels of lexical representation in the study of the relation between lexical semantics, morphology, and syntax, in the line of Booij (1992), Levin and Rappaport Hovav (1995, 1998), and Sadler and Spencer (1998). We will show that only verbs belonging to a specific lexical class can undergo co- prefixation. Therefore, it seems that this process has to be accounted for at the level of lexical semantic structure. As for auto- prefixation, it will be shown that this morphological process can apply to verbs belonging to very different lexical classes. This seems to indicate that auto-prefixation has to be accounted for at the level of argument structure. However, we will show that the existence of an additional semantic restriction governing auto- prefixation makes it necessary to have reference both to a lexical syntactic level of representation like argument structure and to a semantic level of representation like lexical semantic structure.

Verbal nouns in Insular Celtic languages have long been a subject of interest because they are capable of exhibiting both nominal and verbal properties, posing a persistent challenge when it comes to determining their precise categorization. This study therefore seeks to examine the intersective gradience of verbal nouns in Scottish Gaelic from a functional-typological and multidimensional perspective, providing an insight into the interaction between their morphosyntactic, semantic, and pragmatic properties and their lexical categorization, and, consequently, encouraging a broader discussion on linguistic gradience. This hybrid category plays a central role in the clause structure of Scottish Gaelic, as it appears in a wide range of distinct grammatical constructions. Drawing on a range of diagnostic tests revealing the morphosyntactic and semantic properties of verbal nouns across various contexts (e.g., etymology, morphological structure, inflection, case marking, TAM features, syntactic function, types of modification, form and position of objects, distributional patterns, cleft constructions, argument structure, subcategorization, etc.), this line of research identifies two key environments, depending on whether the construction features a verbal noun functioning either as a verb or a noun. This distinction aims to illustrate the way in which these contexts condition the gradience of verbal nouns. By doing so, it provides strong evidence for their function along a continuum ranging from fully verbal to fully nominal depending on their syntactic context and semantic and pragmatic interpretation. In conclusion, the findings of this study suggest that the use of verbal nouns blurs the line between two lexical categories, often displaying mixed properties that challenge a rigid categorization.

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.

Several Slavic and Baltic languages have an “aggressive” antipassive construction, where in a reflexive marker is used to mark object omission. The construction often carries habitual or potential aspectual meanings and is restricted to a small group of verbs. This study examines the lexical restrictions of the constructions across a sample of 11 Slavic and Baltic languages, with a special focus on Russian. The results show that across the languages, the construction is used to express a set of concepts, of which ‘hit’ and ‘push’ are the most prototypical. Verbs used in the antipassive express unwanted action on an animate patient, and they also share features of inherent atelicity and potential reciprocality. All languages in the survey display syncretism of reciprocal and antipassive markers, resulting in ambiguous plural subject constructions. Based on this, it is suggested that the “aggressive” antipassive with animate subjects has grammaticalized from the reciprocal function of the reflexive marker. Lexical semantics hence play an important role in the extension of functions of reflexive markers in these languages.

Nominal and verbal semantic structure: analogies and interactions

It is widely known that there is nowadays a certain consensus on the idea that nominal constructions, like sentences, are constrained by a series of restrictions that structure the relation between the head and the modifiers. This implies that some nouns, like verbs, admit arguments. This paper is based on the idea that syntactic structure is built upon categorially neutral roots to try to explain the fact that verbs and nouns are parallel regarding argument structure. Evidence from a corpus of Catalan language (CTILC) is given to prove how this is true at least regarding internal argument structure. Moreover, nouns of all aspectual types are analyzed, as well as nouns admitting different kinds of complements, so as to describe which factors are relevant in the realization of internal arguments of nouns and nominalizations in Catalan.

This study is an investigation of the patterns and strength of the connections between English dative verbs and the double object dative (DOD) argument structure in native speaker production. The subjects completed three written production tasks using dative and other verbs from different semantic classes of verbs. The results show that alternating dative verbs varied in their patterns of connection to argument structures, but were consistent in the strength of their connection to the DOD argument structure across subjects and tasks. There was no support for production differences due to verb class membership, but the results do support a model of lexical representation that represents variable strengths of association between individual verbs and argument structures. With respect to the design of production and processing studies, the results do not support the treatment of alternating dative verbs as a unitary group, nor a priori assumptions about relative argument structure complexity between alternating and nonalternating verbs, but do support the use of production tasks to determine individual verb argument structure preferences.

This article presents a brief overview of the official language certifications available for seven Romance minority languages which are spoken in Europe: Aragonese, Asturian, Catalan, and Galician (primarily spoken on the Iberian peninsula), Corsican and Occitan (spoken in France), and Romansh (spoken in Switzerland). As a component of a broader project which has previously examined official credentials for selected Celtic and Slavic languages, the study first outlines general information about the Romance language family and the minority and minoritised languages which are members of it, before giving a short overview of language certifications as well as the study’s methodology and research questions. Subsequently, in adopting a similar approach to the previous analyses, each of the seven linguistic case studies is presented with the objective of obtaining core information about the types, levels, awarding institutions, and wider recognition relating to the certifications concerned. These findings are then discussed, after which some conclusions and additional research possibilities are offered.

One of the most widely used constructions in Korean is the so-called light verb construction (LVC) involving an active-denoting verbal noun (VN) together with the light verb ha-ta`do'. This paper first discusses the argument composition of the LVC, mixed properties of VNs which have provided a challenge to syntactic analyses with a strict version of X-bar theory. The paper shows the mechanism of multiple classification of category types with systematic inheritance can provide an effective way of capturing these mixed properties. An implementation of the analysis within the LKB (Linguistics Knowledge Building) system proves its feasibility and efficiency.

The purpose of the article is to conduct a comparative study of groups of motion verbs in Russian, Ukrainian, Polish, Czech, Upper Sorbian languages, as well as to analyze the results of the evolution of the motion verbs’ system in modern Bulgarian, Serbian and Croatian languages. The subjects of this study are the composition, semantic and grammatical features of imperfective non-prefixed verbs of motion. These verbs differ on the basis of unidirectional/non-unidirectional (multidirectional) movement. Methods of semantic, grammatical, etymological, comparative analysis, historical and descriptive methods are used in this linguistic research. Identifying differences in the functioning of East Slavonic, West Slavonic, South Slavonic verbs of motion in synchrony and diachrony is the finding of research. The comparison of different Slavonic systems of verbs of motion revealed some archaic features of Common Slavonic verbs of motion and some results of semantic and grammatical evolution of these verb systems. In general, the old Common Slavonic system of verbs of motion that existed before the derivation of the category of verbal aspect retains the main feature of differentiation on the basis of opposition of unidirectional and non‑unidirectional (multidirectional) movement. The loss of some pairs of verbs of motion in East and West Slavonic languages and complete loss of correlation of paired verbs of motion in South Slavonic languages is due to two reasons: 1) the divergence of lexical meanings of these verbs in pairs; 2) the development of the productive process of derivation of aspect verb pairs, in which the non-prefixed verbs opposed on the meaning of unidirectional and non-unidirectional movement evolve to the pairs of verbs opposed on aspects: perfective or imperfective (with or without prefixes). The practical value of the research is to use the results of it to optimize the processes of learning Slavonic languages as foreign, as well as for fundamental studies of the evolution of the Slavic verb.

Para el estudio de la interacción entre léxico verbal y sintaxis se propone una aproximación basada en Corpus, utilizando los datos provisionales del proyecto ADESSE. El examen de los datos muestra la alta flexibilidad sintáctica de cualquier verbo, pero también cómo cada verbo o cada clase semántica de verbos tiende a organizarse siguiendo un conjunto más o menos limitado de patrones sintácticos más frecuentes. Tomando como ejemplo las principales variaciones construccionales de los verbos de percepción del español, se muestra cómo los esquemas sintácticos más frecuentes con los verbos de percepción representan asociaciones semánticamente coherentes entre el significado del verbo y el significado del esquema, cómo los esquemas alternantes proporcionan conceptualizaciones alternativas de situaciones similares, y cómo los verbos más frecuentes con un esquema sintáctico sirven de modelo o punto de atracción para la producción o interpretación de construcciones similares con otros verbos.

This article examines stative and passive constructions in Chichewa, finding that the syntax of the two constructions is best accommodated in a model that allows argument structure changing operations, such as stative, to be distinguished from operations, such as passive, that affect the mapping from argument structure to grammatical functions. The Chichewa facts recall observations made concerning the differences between English adjectival and verbal passives, first formalized in Wasow 1977, but provide more straightforward evidence for a distinction, due to the absence of surface homophony. The paper concludes by reconsidering English adjectival and verbal passive constructions, and showing them to be morphologically distinct.

To investigate children's performance on a fast mapping task. Possible effects across age, dialect group, and clinical status were explored. Participants between the ages of 4 and 9 saw a series of pictured events and heard novel verbs. The novel verbs were in intransitive, transitive, dative, and complement syntactic frames or argument structures. The children then had to answer questions about the novel verbs that revealed what meaning they had attached to them. The field-testing of a new assessment instrument provided the data for typically developing children and children with language impairment from 2 linguistic communities: (a) mainstream American English speaking and (b) African American English speaking. Strict criteria were used for the 529 participants that defined both their clinical and dialect status. There were significant effects of age and clinical status on the participants' ability to fast map a novel verb from its argument structure, but no significant effects for dialect. Regardless of dialect, children with specific language impairment have difficulty using syntactic frames to identify a likely meaning of a novel verb. In addition, the syntactic frames are differentially difficult, with complement structures being particularly hard.

Reflexives have been extensively studied from different approaches and perspectives, but no clear consensus has been established on the criteria for their definition. From a morphological point of view, a distinction between nominal reflexives and verbal reflexives has been generally accepted in both functional and generative approaches. However, it is ultimately hard to make a precise distinction between verbal and nominal reflexives which should possibly be viewed as a continuum rather than as a discrete partition. In this paper, I will discuss the opportunity of a categorial distinction between verbal and nominal reflexive constructions, identifying some general principles which allow us to classify a form as “verbal” or “nominal”.

The article presents factors influencing the choice of verbal aspects in Polish legal texts. The Polish legal language norm generally uses imperfective verbs (hereinafter: ipf) in the present tense. The reason is not only the universal directival function of the present tense but also a specific function of the imperfective aspect in Polish, i.e., its definitional meaning. Other Slavic languages use perfective verbs (hereinafter referred to as: pf) as a standard legal norm in codes. The first part of the text, based on Łaziński, Jóźwiak 2017 and Łaziński 2020, is a theoretical analysis with the use of linguistic and legal background. In the second part of the article, the authors present the results of a survey using a fictional statute where respondents had to choose an appropriate verbal aspect. By applying such a strategy it is possible to evaluate the significance of different factors influencing the aspect choice described in the first part of the texts and other factors considered in the survey. In the authors’ opinion, the conclusions of the survey and theoretical discussion have important consequences for both linguistics and law, especially for the grammatical interpretation of the law.