Complements Of Verbs Research Articles

Are There Serial Verb Constructions in Old English? A New Perspective on the Changes in Verbal Complementation

This article discusses the existence of serial verb constructions in Old English and explores the complementation of aspectual and control verbs as well as other related constructions. The discussion of the Old English data finds remarkable differences with respect to the syntactic configurations of Present-Day English that are described as serial by Roberts (2010). Although the range of serial constructions is more restrictive in Old English, at least with aspectual verbs, the analysis of verbal complementation from the perspective of serialisation allows us to bring other convergent constructions to the discussion, including configurations with linked infinitives and participles in predicative constructions and configurations with pre-modals and the causative verb dōn ‘to do’.

A Corpus-Based Study of “V + Dào” Constructions as Temporal Contouring Events in Mandarin

The temporal contouring event is a hot topic in Talmy’s linguistic typology, and the “V + Dào” construction is one of the prototypes of Chinese compliments with its typological disputes, which lie in its event integration patterns. According to the corpus-based and correlational analysis of “V + Dào” constructions as temporal contouring events in Mandarin, this paper aims to explore their event integration patterns and reveal their event integration degrees in terms of event semantics, and syntactic properties. The research results are found that: IEI_V can conflate 2 conceptual primitives;  IEI_D consists of two conceptual primitives; EEI_VD contains 2 combinations of IEI_V and IEI_D, which can be formularized as “2+2”;  the value of EEI_Type refers to the verb-phase construction (VPha); the hierarchy of correlated variables in IEI_V and IEI_D is ranked as “(ActiPro > AssoFun) > (SynType_VD > SynTyp_X) > (FigEnt_Anim)”; Chin_VD is only weakly correlated with SynType_VD and SynTyp_X. This study can provide insights to reveal the lexicalization and grammaticalization processes of “V + Dào” construction or even the verb complement construction in Mandarin.

Competition in the Complementation of Old English Control Verbs with Oblique Marking: A Corpus Analysis

The aim of this article is to explain the syntactic competition found in the complementation of Old English Prevent verbs. The competition on argumenthood involves linked verbal predications and linked nominal predications. Evidence is gathered for continuity both between finite and non-finite linked verbal predications as well as between non-finite and nominalised linked predications. This evidence points to a diachronic development: finite clause > non-finite clause > nominalisation. The main conclusion of the article is that the Interclausal Relation Hierarchy predicts the replacement of the finite clause complementation with non-finite clause complementation in such a way that the syntactically tighter noun phrase involving a deverbal nominalisation constitutes the next step of syntactic development.

The Orientation of Evidentials in Attitude Contexts: A Case Study Based on Narratives in Paraguayan Guarani

This paper examines the orientation of evidentials in complements of attitude verbs, with Paraguayan Guarani evidential ra’e as a case study. It argues that embedded evidentials can be directed either towards the speaker or towards a matrix attitude-holder argument (e.g., the subject of the attitude verb) and that a syntactic representation of the evidence-acquisition event, with its pronominal subject, in the lower end of the CP field, is well-poised to capture this potential ambiguity. Language-particular properties can also play a determining role in the orientation of the embedded evidential, as is the case of the subordinator ha in Paraguayan Guarani. It is argued that this subordinator requires the presence of a Complementizer specified with a (strong) Modal component (which encodes certainty/commitment on the part of the attitude holder with respect to the embedded proposition) and that this property biases the orientation of ra’e towards the matrix attitude-holder argument.

Semantic and Syntactic Range of Old English Nominalisations with Aspectual Verbs

This article analyses the complementation of Old English verbs of aspect by means of nominalisations. Three types of derived nominals are distinguised: deverbal nominals that entail a verbal predication but do not take complements of their own; direct nominalisations (with Actor or Undergoer genitive); and oblique nominalisations. The main conclusion of the article is that, to the sources of the English gerund identified by Lass (1992), others should be added, including suffixes (such as -ung, -ness and -t) and affixless derivation from strong and weak verbs. It is also a conclusion of this study that Old English already provides evidence of the acquisition of verbal properties by deverbal nominalisations, such as nominalisations with direct objects and voice distinctions.

Causative constructions in process: How do they come into existence in learner writing?

Abstract This article examines the processes through which English causative constructions with MAKE are produced by French-speaking learners. It relies on data from the Process Corpus of English in Education (PROCEED), in which every text is accompanied by a keylog file and a screencast video. These data make it possible to observe the process paths of constructions as they unfold, from their appearance in the text to their evolution (and possible disappearance) through revision. The analysis shows that almost 20% of the causative constructions do not make it to the final version of the text, either because the idea of causation disappears altogether or because it is expressed in a different way. Among the causative constructions that are kept in the finished text, most still undergo some changes, which range from the simple correction of a typo to the transformation of the complement type (e.g. a verbal complement becoming an adjectival complement). Some of these changes are the result of dictionary consultation, also visible in the process data. In addition, the keylog files reveal the presence of pauses during writing, whose investigation can improve our understanding of the mental processing of causative constructions. It thus turns out that in almost 40% of the cases, the causative constructions are immediately preceded and followed by a pause, which could indicate that they are stored holistically in learners’ minds. Besides providing insights into the processes through which causative constructions come into existence in learner writing, this study also illustrates how writing process data can bring us closer to what the reality of writing looks like for language learners.

Complexity in Complementation: Understanding lifespan change in the verb complementation of individuals

Complexity in Complementation: Understanding lifespan change in the verb complementation of individuals

“Clitic climbing” in Hittite

Abstract Cross-linguistically, clitic climbing occurs when clitics that belong syntactically and semantically to the subordinate clause (most commonly non-finite, rarely finite) appear in the main clause, i.e., they climb out of the subordinate clause into the main clause. In Hittite, prototypical clitic climbing is attested in two constructions: with non-finite predicates and finite restructuring verbs (Lyutikova & Sideltsev 2021b); and in serial constructions with the finite motion verbs pai- ‘go’ and uwa- ‘come’ co-occurring with another finite verb in the same clause (Koller 2013). In both of these cases, clitics climb out of complements of finite verbs. This paper explores yet another potentially relevant context for clitic climbing, a particular type of complex sentence that may be called ‘mismatch sentences’ (Sideltsev 2023). These involve three structurally distinct types of complex sentences which share one common property: they all have the same surface structure (1a) one word of the main clause (2) subordinate clause (1b) rest of the main clause. The enclitics of the subordinate clause are in (1a), so that they appear to climb out of the subordinate into the main clause. The enclitics of the main clause are consistently in the rest of the main clause (1b), never attached to the first word of the main clause (1a). Structurally, all these subordinate clauses adjoin to the main clause. This distribution of clitics is attested only if there is a one-word constituent in the main clause to the left of the subordinate clause. As movement out of adjoined clauses is held to be illicit in current linguistic theory, it is argued that, differently from prototypical clitic climbing, this is a purely post-syntactic reordering and does not involve any kind of syntactic movement of clitics out of the subordinate into the main clause: the structure one-word constituent of main clause—subordinate clause—main clause is always prosodically realized at the post-syntactic stage as subordinate clause—main clause.

The syntax of silent directional prepositions in Jordanian Arabic

AbstractIn Jordanian Arabic (JA), the complement of some motion verbs optionally appears without a visible preposition in what is known as (P)reposition-drop (Ioannidou and den Dikken 2009). This article offers a detailed description of P-drop in JA, showing that the common properties of P-drop found in languages with P-drop hold in JA. I argue that Gehrke and Lekakou's (2013) pseudo noun incorporation approach to P-drop cannot account for the P-drop facts in JA. I show, through different diagnostics, that the prepositionless noun in JA does not exhibit the typical properties of pseudo-incorporated nouns. Instead, I argue that P-drop in JA involves a full PP–DP structure with a silent P head (Ioannidou and den Dikken 2009, Myler 2013, Biggs 2014, Bailey 2018). The findings of this article add insights to the ongoing debate regarding the underlying mechanisms involved in P-drop.

Classical Greek object cases

Abstract We examine here the distribution of morphological case (e.g., accusative, genitive, and dative) among object complements of monotransitive verbs in Classical Greek (CG). Accusative-marked objects are generally deemed to be direct objects (DO), while dative- and genitive-marked complements are typically treated as syntactically or semantically separate, sometimes being treated as objects bearing exceptional/semantic/quirky case and sometimes being analyzed simply as indirect objects (IO). Restricting our focus to verbs which have a single complement, we can observe that the distribution of accusative (ACC), genitive (GEN), and dative (DAT) marking on these in CG is atypical. CG productively places DAT and GEN NP s alongside ACC NP s as a singular complement to monotransitive verbs, allowing them to occupy what would normally be thought of as the direct-object position, but for their GEN and DAT case-marking. We offer an analysis of these verbs and their semanto-syntactic collocations, seeking to understand what is communicated through the marking of either ACC, GEN, or DAT on complement NP s. We find first that ACC and GEN-marking verbs interact in a transitivity hierarchy, being set apart by the change of state of the object (following an analysis laid out by Luraghi 2010). Second, we find that DAT-marking verbs exist outside of this hierarchy, making up their own productive class of interaction verbs, those which denote a complex series of overlapping subevents (first laid out by Blume 1998). Thus, this study offers an analysis of a wide array of ACC, GEN, and DAT case-marking verbs collected from a corpus of nine Classical Greek authors, providing the first statistical analysis of the conundrum of ‘atypical’ case-selection patterns of Classical Greek monotransitive verbs, wherein non-ACC cases are used to mark what appear to be DO s.

Null subject acquisition in L2 Chinese speakers: a case study on English L1 speakers

AbstractThis article investigates the acquisition of null subjects (henceforth NSs) in (radical pro-drop) Chinese by learners whose native language is (non-pro-drop) English – henceforth ELs – working within the ‘topic chain’ information-structural approach. Our main goal is to verify whether a learner’s proficiency level can have an impact on the interpretation and acceptability of embedded NSs when more than one head is proposed for the relevant topic chain in different structural contexts (i.e., complements of bridge and factive verbs). The results of a pilot experimental test suggest that the requirement for a minimal overt link (MOLC) in the relevant chain plays an important role for ELs with a lower proficiency level. Conversely, MOLC restrictions do not affect ELs with a higher proficiency. Furthermore, the results show that ELs can correctly distinguish between complements of bridge and factive verbs already at an HSK 3 level. As for interpretation, results suggest that contextual information cannot supersede structural constraints for ELs. However, since a clash with contextual information seems to not affect acceptability for ELs, contrary to Chinese Native Speakers, we propose that even HSK 5 students have not fully acquired the competence for managing NSs in a radical language such as Chinese.

A Study on the Conceptual Structure of the Use of Prepositions in the Complement of Goal-oriented Motion Verbs in Brazilian Portuguese

Abstract This study aims at understanding the conceptual structure of the use of prepositions (a ‘at’, para ‘to’, em ‘in’) in the complement of goal-oriented motion verbs (ir ‘go’, vir ‘come’, chegar ‘arrive’) in Brazilian Portuguese. Applying a corpus-based and profile-based methodology, within a Cognitive Grammar framework, this study combines a multifactorial usage-feature analysis of these prepositional constructions with their subsequent multivariate statistical modeling. The results point out the cognitive basis of this constructional variation and specifically show that the semantic features ‘profiling’ and ‘motion verb’ are the most important language-internal predictors in the use of the prepositions. This variation conveys alternative grammatical construals, i.e., the very high frequency of em ‘in’ in the complement of goal-oriented motion indicates nuances of meaning motivated by the superimposition of image schemas and the cognitive operation of profiling. Language-external features, such as register, also play a role in the variation.

Viewpointed morphology: A unified account of Spanish verb-complement compounds as fictive interaction structures

Spanish verb-complement (VC) compounds, one of the most common compound types in Spanish, raise interesting questions, because they are inflected, prototypically containing a verb in the third-person singular of the present indicative. This complexity seems paradoxical, given the strong restrictions of Romance languages on word compounding.Based on a self-compiled corpus of over 1,400 VC compounds, we show that the compound’s verb may display different persons and illocutionary forces. We claim that all Spanish VC compounds can be parsimoniously accounted for as involving a grammaticalized perspective-indexing structure, setting up a non-actual enunciation. We identify three subtypes of nominal VC compounds according to whether they refer to: (i) the fictive addresser of the non-actual enunciation it is composed of (e.g. metomentodo [I+put+myself+into+everything], ‘meddler’), (ii) the fictive addressee (e.g. tentetieso [hold+yourself+upright], ‘tilting doll’), or (iii) the fictive conversational topic (e.g. pintalabios [paints+lips], ‘lipstick’). We further argue that, despite undeniable morphological constraints, Spanish VC compounds involve a similarly complex semantic and morphological structure as English multi-word compounds like ‘wanna-be(s)’, ‘forget-me-not(s)’, or ‘bring-and-buy sale’. This reveals that intersubjectivity can be central to word formation.

The constructional categorization of Saisiyat multi-predicate sentences

Abstract This study investigates the constructional categorization of multi-predicate sentences in Saisiyat. This type of complex sentences simultaneously involves features of serial verb construction and complementation in Saisiyat, which give rise to indeterminacy in constructional categorization. In order to solve this problem, the current study probes into the categorization between serial verb construction and complementation regarding Aarts’ (2007) constructional gradience and semantic relations (Van Valin & LaPolla 1997). The investigation demonstrates a discrete boundary between the two constructions with convergence on each other, while subtypes of multi-predicate sentences are aligned on the convergence based on intra- and inter-categorical relations. Two structural dependencies are proposed to carry out a taxonomy of Saisiyat complex sentences. A theoretical implication derives from this study that Saisiyat multi-predicate sentences are manifestations of formalized morphosyntactic configurations with a pairing of particularized semantic relations instead of coinage based on analogic conventionalization (Fillmore 1997; Goldberg 2019).

You must worry! The interpretation of <em>mustn’t</em> varies with context and verbal complement

We investigate experimentally whether American English adult speakers are influenced in their interpretation of mustn’t by pragmatic context (contexts favoring lack of necessity/necessity not to readings) and/or the semantic properties of the verbal complements of the modal (verbs denoting events in the physical realm vs. verbs expressing undesirable mental activities). In an experiment combining a forced choice task and a gradient acceptability task, participants saw sentences containing mustn’t and physical events/negative mental activities in lack of necessity/necessity not to contexts (e.g., You mustn’t worry. The woman will give you money) They had to choose the most suitable interpretation of mustn’t ('it is necessary not to'/'it is not necessary' interpretations). They then had to rate the acceptability of the sentences containing mustn’t in context on a Likert scale from 1 to 7. We find that participants split into two groups: an Interdiction Group, which always treated mustn’t as expressing interdiction, and a Variation Group, which tended to interpret mustn’t as lack of necessity when the context favored such a reading and when the verbal complement the modal combined with was a negative mental activity. We argue that the lack of necessity reading of mustn’t is obtained via pragmatic weakening from its primary interdiction reading, and that this process is sensitive to context, as well as to the cognitive difficulty of imposing or forbidding mental (but not physical) activities to others.

Oblique complements in Estonian: A corpus perspective

This study focuses on Estonian verb-complement structures, which include oblique (non-canonically marked) complements marked in spatial cases. Not all approaches agree on whether canonical arguments and oblique complements have argument status of the same type, but they do mostly agree that the two types of complement markings are used by different types of verbs. First, oblique case is viewed as always indexing the original semantics of the case (direct semantics), that is osutama ‘point at’ selecting an allative (‘onto’) complement. Second, oblique case usage is seen as referring to a restricted set of syntactic relations (indirect semantics), that is Estonian allative and adessive being used for marking Experiencers. In any case, oblique complement verbs are viewed as more semantically restricted than canonical object verbs. This study tests these two hypotheses in a quantitative corpus approach. In a non-semantically extracted sample of verbs (n = 232), it compares the lexical-semantic transitivity of oblique and canonical complement verbs in order to investigate the degree to which indirect semantic effects differentiate between the two types of verbs. In addition, it outlines direct semantic effects between oblique case frames in terms of semantic roles. Finally, it investigates the way these patterns are related to the cases’ individual grammaticalisation degrees.

Clausal complements of non-agentive visual perception verbs in Bulgarian and Russian

Clausal complements of non-agentive visual perception verbs in Bulgarian and Russian

Completivas de para no Português de Moçambique

This paper a nalyses verb c omplements, finite a nd i nfinitival, i ntroduced by para 'for' in Mozambican Portuguese (MP). In the analysed data, on the one hand, there is a tendency already studied and referred to in the literature (Issak 1998, P. Gonçalves 2002, 2010, a.o.), which consists of introducing finite complements to directive verbs by the preposition para and, on the other hand, the tendency not yet studied, which consists of introducing corresponding infinitival complements by the same preposition. These results reveal a tendency to standardize the c-selection properties of finite and infinitival complements of directive verbs. Furthermore, they allow to infer that para is a true preposition, as an alternative to previous analyses which have shown that para is a complementizer (Duarte 2003, Barbosa & Raposo 2013, A. Gonçalves et al. 2018) or it is as part of the conjunctional phrase para que'for that' (see Barbosa 2013, for European Portuguese (EP)), and also as part of the complex c omplementizer para-que (see P . G onçalves 2 002, 2 005, 2 010, f or MP). I n MP, but not in EP, para complements selected by directive verbs can be taken up anaphorically by demonstratives like isso 'that'preceded by this preposition. Furthermore, the preposition para can also occur when directive verbs are constructed with nominal arguments. These facts favour the assumption that, in PM, the complements to directive verbs, finite and infinitival, introduced by para, are oblique complements and the preposition para is external to the complement clause/CP.

Subjectless infinitive complements of periphrastic causative verbs in Middle English and possible reasons for the loss of the construction

The article presents selected facts concerning two kinds of analysis of Subjectless Infinitive Complements (ØI) of Causative Verbs in Middle English. One of them is the Indefinite Object Deletion Analysis (hence IOD), which can be considered natural in terms of the Object Deletion principles. The other one is the Verb Raising Analysis (hence VR) which provides some interesting facts about the history of English causatives. Among others, the article addresses the auxiliary-like behaviour of causative verbs in Middle English and says that the very loss of ØI can be accounted for reasonably by postulating that the existence of ØI and passive aci constructions are mutually exclusive. In addition, one should also remember about the double application of IOD and VR, which yielded unclear and semantically complicated structures, as possible factors in the loss of ØI constructions in English.

Subordination in Western Tamang

This article examines the clause combining in Western Tamang of Nuwakot district in Nepal. The significance of language as spoken in a particular community of Nepal reflects in the diversity as being accommodated in the national policy of language by the language commission of Nepal. Western Tamang is a major dialect of Tamang, a Tibeto-Burman language spoken in Nepal. The main goal of this study has been to analyze the forms and functions of clause combining in Western Tamang. This article describes the process of clause combining from both formal and functional perspectives. The data for this study have been taken from the Western Tamang dialect spoken in Rasuwa and Trishuli based on functional-typological grammar of T. Givón (2001).However; simple clauses are discussed in terms of subordination and coordination to some extent. Subordination involves five kinds of clauses: serial verb construction, complement clauses, adverbial clauses, relative clauses and converbal clauses. In subordination, Western Tamang uses non-finite form of the verb as a major strategy for clause combining. In coordination, except for conjunction and adversative conjunction, it uses coordinators borrowed from Nepali. It uses simple juxtaposition, an asyndeton coordination for conjunction. Clause combining as a morpho-syntactic phenomenon in Western Tamang reveals typologically interesting characteristics which needs from a broad typological perspective. The morpho-syntactic analysis of clause combining in the Western Tamang would contribute to understanding new phenomenon in Western Tamang and other related languages. This study may provide the basic foundation for the further study of the morpho-syntactic aspects in dialect. It is useful to local community for preparing materials for multilingual education in the dialect as well. Despite differences perceived among the Tamang speaking people in terms of language variations, the basics in their language are similar. The beauty and property of language can be seen in diversity.