Abstract
Abstract In Dutch, posture verbs like liggen ‘lie’ and staan ‘stand’ are obligatorily used in locative constructions with inanimate subjects, classifying the spatial Figure-Ground relation. Prima facie, in this use, posture verbs seem more like functional elements than like lexical verbs. This paper investigates processing of Dutch posture verbs in a reference resolution task in the visual world paradigm, to get more clarity on the nature of these verbs. We know that lexical verbs like rinkelen ‘ring’ cause anticipatory looks towards a matching target referent like telefoon ‘telephone’; and that they suppress looks to a phonological competitor like telescoop ‘telescope’. The functional property of grammatical gender on determiners (de vs. het) is less robust in directing looks. When it comes to anticipating the target referent, and suppressing looks to a phonological competitor, do posture verbs pattern with lexical verbs, or with functional elements like grammatical gender?
Highlights
In Dutch, posture verbs like liggen ‘lie’ and staan ‘stand’ are obligatorily used in locative constructions with inanimate subjects, classifying the spatial Figure-Ground relation
In Dutch, posture verbs are obligatory in locative constructions with inanimate subjects, and their use is further extended to more metaphorical uses (Lemmens 2002), use as progressive-marking auxiliaries (Lemmens 2005; Van Pottelberge 2002), use with complementetive past participles (Bogaards 2019), and quotative use (Bogaards 2020)
We didn’t use hangen ‘hang’ for similar reasons: hangen requires something to hang from, which might again form a potential target in participants’ minds. While it is a full member of the set staan, liggen, zitten, hangen that is used with inanimate subjects in locative constructions, hangen intuitively seems a bit more marked; it is less frequent than the other posture verbs, and it is acquired later (Mulders and Koring 2020)
Summary
Verbs that describe human postures, like stand, sit, and lie, have extended uses in many languages (Newman 2002; Ameka and Levinson 2007). (6) Het boek zit in de doos The book sits in the box ‘The book is in the box (contained; can be in any orientation)’ It is difficult for non-native speakers to learn which verb to use (Lemmens and Perrez 2012), and even native speakers struggle to specify what exactly the posture verbs encode. This is a fascinating question that cannot be addressed in this paper; for some insights into what factors come into play, see Van den Toorn (1975) and Lemmens (2002). In sum: selectional restrictions on lexical verbs and grammatical gender marking on determiners both suppress looks to phonological competitors while the target word is being heard, but only lexical verbs trigger predictive looks to objects that match their selectional restrictions. Eye-tracking experiment comparing posture verbs to lexical verbs and grammatical gender: Method
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