Placement Verbs in Chinese and English: Language-Specific Lexicalization Patterns

Abstract

This study aims to show that language-specific distinctions of lexicalization patterns are crucial to verbal semantic studies by examining the differences of Placement verbs in English and Chinese. It argues that cross-linguistic transference of lexical knowledge should not be made without a detailed analysis of seemingly corresponding verbs in different languages. It also probes into the long-debated issue on how languages conceptualize a common event type with distinct lexical and grammatical realizations. By conducting a contrastive study of the lexicalization patterns of placement verbs in Chinese and English, it is proposed that, while a placing event is conceptually universal in taking the basic semantic components of Agent, Theme, Location, and Path, placement verbs in Chinese and English vary in their lexical origins, level of specificity and morpho-semantic subtypes. It is shown that placement verbs are lexicalized and categorized in language-specific ways that have typological implications. Ultimately, the study sheds new light on class-specific, cross-linguistic comparisons.