Abstract
Event structural theories decompose verb meanings into an event template and idiosyncratic root. Many mainstream theories assume a bifurcation in the kinds of entailments contributed by roots and templates, in particular that lexical entailments of change of an individual in change-of-state verbs are only introduced by templates, not roots. We argue against such theories by comparing Levin's(1993) non-deadjectival vs. deadjectival change-of-state verb roots (e.g. crack vs. red roots). A broad-scale typological study reveals that red-type roots tend to have simple (e.g. non-deverbal) stative forms, but crack-type roots do not. Semantic studies of Kakataibo and English show that terms built on crack-type roots always entail change, while terms based on red-type roots may not. We thus suggest that crack-type roots entail change-of-state, contra Bifurcation.
Highlights
In much work in lexical semantics verb meanings are assumed to consist at least partly of an “event structure” constraining the events described by the verb, consisting of (a) an event template built from basic event-denoting predicates like CAUSE and BECOME that define the broad temporal and causal contours of the event and (b) some idiosyncratic “root” filling in real world meanings such as specific states or actions for a given verb’s template
Caused change-of-state verbs like flatten or crack can be viewed as surface realizations of underlying event structures consisting of state-denoting roots that combine with functional heads introducing CAUSE and BECOME meanings (e.g. Hale & Keyser 2002, Embick 2004)
Are entailments tied to CAUSE and BECOME introduced solely by the template, so that any time a verb gives rise to such an entailment there must be a corresponding v of the appropriate sort, with its concomitant grammatical reflexes? Or can a root introduce these entailments independently of the template it occurs in? A common implicit and sometimes explicit assumption in many event structural works is that entailments introduced by templates are excluded from roots, for example as outlined in Embick’s (2009) “Bifurcation Thesis for Roots” (BTR) and Arad’s (2005) “Root Hypothesis”
Summary
In much work in lexical semantics verb meanings are assumed to consist at least partly of an “event structure” constraining the events described by the verb, consisting of (a) an event template built from basic event-denoting predicates like CAUSE and BECOME that define the broad temporal and causal contours of the event and (b) some idiosyncratic “root” filling in real world meanings such as specific states or actions for a given verb’s template (see e.g. Dowty 1979, Rappaport Hovav & Levin 1998). One possible workaround would be to say that the event structures of result root change-of-state verbs somehow disallow this attachment, though it is difficult to see how this would come about If this pattern was truly an idiosyncratic feature of English, perhaps the clean divide between contributions by roots and templates posited by the BTR would still hold modulo some unusual stipulations about possible attachment sites. Data published in prior literature already suggests that the morphological patterns found in English occur in other languages as well (on Eastern Armenian see Megerdoomian 2002: 98, on Ulwa see Koontz-Garboden 2006, 2009b, on Tongan see Koontz-Garboden 2005, on O’odham, Hale & Keyser 1998: 92, on Pima see Smith 2006: 3), though there are some gaps in the data To explore this question more thoroughly we examined a balanced language sample to check for the existence of simple statives based on PC and result roots. The paradigm for the meaning ‘small’ in Tenango Tzeltal had no underlying root, while the paradigm for ‘long’ in Oromo did:
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