When Small Is Many in the Event Domain

Abstract

This paper pursues the idea that event-internal pluractional verbs are morphologically complex forms that describe non-canonical events and denote in the domain of events constituted by pluralities of phases [Tovena 2010b]. Non-canonicity is understood in comparative terms with respect to the description of the events provided by the corresponding simplex verb forms. The leading question is what is the source of the multiplicative meaning component in verb forms such as tagliuzzare and tossicchiare in Italian, and it is answered by arguing that it arises from the use of diminutive morphology specifically to build verb forms that describe modified events. Parallelisms with the nominal domain strengthen the case for a characterisation of the word formation process as involving diminutive morphology. It is also shown that the type of modification of an event description allowed by forming pluractional verbs is generally more complex that by simple adverbial or PP adjunction, as it involves at least two dimensions of the event. Furthermore, languages may use morphological distinctions to mark different binary oppositions within Cusic’s three level system.