Denominal Verbs Research Articles

Structural forms of denominative verbs and deverbalization tendencies in the southern sub-dialects

Structural forms of denominative verbs and deverbalization tendencies in the southern sub-dialects

A Usage-based Empirical Study on the Acquisition of Denominal Verbs

A Usage-based Empirical Study on the Acquisition of Denominal Verbs

A typology of denominal verb formation strategies

AbstractThis article aims to fill a gap in the typological literature by discussing the typology of overt denominal verb formation strategies, that is, morphosyntactic strategies other than conversion/zero‐derivation that are used to derive a verb from a nominal base. We analyse the morphological, syntactic and semantic properties of these strategies in a variety sample of 222 languages. These properties include the morphological status, the productivity, and the semantic effects of the overt verbaliser, as well as the features of the nominal base and the polysemy patterns that characterise verbalisers across languages. The typological survey is complemented by a section on the diachronic typology of overt denominal verb formation strategies, in which we identify the most common diachronic sources of overt verbalisers and discuss the diachronic dynamics that involve them in relation to other denominal verb formation strategies such as conversion/zero‐derivation.

A syntactic analysis of <no + event deverbal nominalization> in Spanish

Abstract This paper addresses how the negative particle no interacts with Spanish deverbal nominalizations that denote an event. Firstly, it is pointed out that, when preceded by negation, these nominalizations only give rise to the inhibited eventuality reading, contrary to what happens with verbs, which give rise to both the inhibited eventuality reading and the negated eventuality reading. Secondly, it is shown that, when these nominalizations co-occur with no, their lexical aspect is modified, as they share properties with events, but with states as well. Thirdly, a proposal of analysis for <no + event deverbal nominalization> is presented. We claim that both the interpretation and lexical aspect of this construction follow from the interaction of negation with the syntactic configuration of the nominalization and, specifically, with the projection responsible for the triggering of the eventuality.

Causative alternation in Zuo Tradition

Abstract This study examines the different variants of causative alternation in Zuo Tradition (左傳), an archaic Chinese narrative history from the Pre-Qin period. It is found that denominal verbs, unergative verbs, and “pure” unaccusative verbs participate actively in the alternation, and that the causative variant bears a complex relation with the agentive and putative variants; this causes problems for previous analyses. This paper proposes a two-step build-up of eventuality for causative alternation in archaic Chinese. Specifically, I propose that verbs in archaic Chinese are monadic and select only one argument. The merger of the verb with this argument is the realization of its eventuality conceptualized in the Lexicon; any further merger is determined by the eventuality composed by different light verbs in syntax. The uninitiated light verb is a placeholder with an empty argument. A specific light verb value is determined by the eventuality that is sent to the syntactic structure. Thus, the difference between all variants in causative alternation witnessed in Zuo Tradition lies in the different eventualities which they introduce into the syntactic configuration.

What’s Dog Got to Do With It? Motivation Behind Denominal (Animal) Verbs

This paper investigates the motivation behind denominal conversion of animal nouns to verbs as well as their resultant senses. Upon critical consideration of previous accounts of animal verb senses and their possible sources, the argument is put forward that animal verbs are not uniform in their semantics and cannot therefore be considered a separate conceptual category or analysed as such. Previous findings are then reinterpreted from the point of view of frame-based accounts of denominal conversion. Animal verbs are shown to be generated by the same grammatical generalisations as other denominal verbs of English, with their metaphoricity appearing to be a concomitant rather than a driving factor in the grammatical act of their conversion.

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.

Typology of Substantives Motivating Denominal Verbs

The article addresses substantives, from which denominal verbs are derived. The research focuses on derivational patterns of denominal verbs. The phenomenon under analysis has been approached in a variety of comparative, contrastive, and typological studies. While most of the works deal with denominal
 verbs structure and semantics, the dependence of the verbs meaning on their motivating substantives’ semantics remains understudied, which makes the present research relevant.
 The research objective is to identify correlations between the denominal verb meaning and its motivating substantive, and to infer the verb meaning on the basis of the motivating substantive semantics.
 The analysis of a number of substanive lexical features such as concrete / abstract / animate / inanimate, nomination by profession, instrument, time interval, etc., enables to suggest the nature of denominal verb and the motivating substantive meaning dependence.
 The conclusion can be made that the meaning of denominal verbs is likely to depend on the semantics of the motivating substantives. The probabilistic nature of this dependence is due to both extralinguistic factors, which influence the choice of a
 nomination feature (i.e. an action associated with a motivating substantive), and linguistic causes, among which are a set of word-formation patterns, their productivity, availability of potential derivatives’ synonyms and homonyms.

Insights from the Meaning First Approach and cognition into denominal verbs in child language: <em>Cherrying</em> means ‘eating cherries’, not ‘becoming like a cherry’

We experimentally investigate the meaning of denominal verbs in child and adult Romanian using a semi-artificial/semi-nonce denominal verb (SAD) paradigm, i.e., using non-existent verbs derived from familiar nouns (a cireşi ‘to cherry’). Importantly, the SAD paradigm allows us to probe into meaning formation without the lexical bias of existing verbs. To see whether children have difficulties understanding SAD verbs in linguistic contexts, we conducted a Contextual Denominal Task. Children were asked to select a matching picture after hearing sentences with SAD verbs in linguistic contexts biasing them for a particular interpretation. Children generally opted for a literal interpretation of a cireşi ‘to cherry’, involving the actual object cherry (‘to pick/eat cherries’), over a figurative interpretation such as a deveni (roşie) ca cireaşa ‘to become (red) like a cherry’, i.e., ‘to blush’ even in figurative-biasing contexts (like Mary cherried when John told her she was beautiful). In order to see whether children perform better when the meaning is made explicit or whether they have a general difficulty with figurative meanings (whether implicit or explicit), we also conducted an Explicit Denominal Paraphrase Task, where children were instead exposed to the corresponding denominal paraphrases (e.g., a deveni ca cireaşa ‘to become like a cherry’). Children performed almost adult-like when the figurative meaning was more explicit. We account for our findings within a Meaning First Approach (Sauerland & Alexiadou 2020; Guasti, Alexiadou & Sauerland 2023), which assumes that compressed meaning is hard, and that decompressing words is subject to two possible principles: (structural and conceptual) simplicity and plausibility. While adults tend to observe plausibility, children prefer simplicity more, generally opting for literal readings, which merge the light verb DO or similar verbs with nouns (Hale & Keyser 2002; Kiparsky 1997).

Avoiding stress on non-lexical material in nouns and verbs: predictable verb prosody in Serbo-Croatian stress standard varieties.

We consider two asymmetries reported in the literature on word prosodic systems: the tendency to allow more prosodic contrast in nouns than in verbs and the tendency to avoid stress on functional material. We focus on the interaction between these two tendencies and propose a formal mechanism to handle this interaction couched in Optimality Theory. In a case study on a group of standard Serbo-Croatian varieties that have predictable stress in verbs but contrastive stress in nouns, we develop an analysis of predictable and morphologically conditioned stress assignment. Our analysis features a family of constraints militating against stress on non-lexical material on three different levels: stress on inflection proper (*Infl-Stress-1), stress on non-lexical material in the locality domain of inflection (*Infl-Stress-2), and stress on non-lexical material altogether (*Infl-Stress-3). Analyzing a class of prosodically exceptional denominal and borrowed verbs, we show that lexical-category effects exist between and within categories: denominal verbs allow exceptional preservation of nominal stress, which leads to additional prosodic contrast in this class of verbs. Finally, we explore the option of subsuming exceptionally contrast-preserving borrowed verbs under denominal verbs, offering arguments in favor of the hotly debated view from the literature that verbs are universally borrowed as denominal.

The semantics of noun-to-verb zero-derivation in English and Spanish

AbstractThe semantics of zero-derivation/conversion has attracted renewed interest both as a subject of description and as a means towards refined descriptions of the process. This paper takes the latter stance and compares which semantic categories occur in zero-derivation/conversion and in overt affixation in two languages with a different morphological model: English and Spanish. For attestation and distribution of the semantic categories, the paper relies on a stratified sample of denominal verbs collected from two comparable corpora: theBritish National Corpusand theCorpus de Referencia del Español Actual. The sample consists in sets of ca. 50 denominal verb-forming resources, one per affixation process, namely affixation by -ate, -(i)fy, -ize/-ise, -en,en- in English,a-…-ar,en-…-ar, -ear, -ecer, -(i)ficar, -izarin Spanish, and zero-derivation/conversion in both languages. The results are contrasted within and across affixes/processes, within each language and across the two languages for the adequacy of a description as zero-derivation or as conversion. Statistical analysis shows that the process/affixes form a cline with overlaps and closer associations between specific affixes/processes and semantic categories, but no clear divide between zero-derivation/conversion and the rest of processes as far as the semantic categories are concerned.

A cognitive approach to the allegedly left-headed prefix verbs in German:

In this article, the much discussed problem of apparently left-headed German prefix verbs (e. g. besohlen ‘sole’, erschneidern ‘obtain by tailoring’, verschimmeln ‘become mouldy’) will be addressed from a cognitive perspective. It will be argued that nominal bases are metonymically reconceptualized as events inside the derivatives. This proposal has two advantages over previous approaches. First, it is not necessary to assign verbal or verbalizing properties to the prefixes be-, ent-, er-, ver-, and zer-, which have their origin in prepositions or adverbs. Secondly, an overgeneration of virtual verbs, i. e. of verbs which are not or no longer attested (e. g. *dachen ‘roof’, †sohlen ‘sole’) is avoided because the metonymic and hence purely conceptual verbalization process takes place in the context of the inseparable prefixes. The prefixes neither change the word-class of their bases nor provide argument structures, which are predicted by a small set of conceptual event schemata. The function of the prefixes is rather to add semantic or aspectual information. Synchronic support for the proposal to be presented first of all comes from the fact that conversion, which historically preceded prefixation in German, is still active. Contrastive analyses of English and German non-derived denominal verbs will illustrate this point. Moreover, many prefix verbs still co-exist with non-derived denominal verbs (e. g. schottern (< Schotter ‘gravel, ballast’) vs. beschottern, entschottern, verschottern). A more general observation is that the compatibility of denominal verbs with the holistic (or ‘synoptic’) perspective conveyed by the inseparable prefixes depends on the metonymic patterns underlying these verbs.

Deverbal nominalization in Runyankore

In this paper I examine eleven different processes of deverbal nominalization in Runyankore, a Lacustrine Bantu language spoken in Uganda. After establishing both general and Runyankore-specific properties that distinguish nouns from verbs, I test each of these nominalizations against 13 phonological, morphological, and syntactic criteria. Although all eleven nominalization constructions can take the determiner-like initial vowel “augment”, and all can be derived from verb bases that include derivational suffixes (“extensions”), e.g. causative, applicative, and reciprocal, only some of the nominalizations allow a pronominal object prefix or a following noun phrase object or adverbial. The various properties are tabulated to show that the different nominalizations vary along a cline, meeting all, some, or none of the nine most discriminating criteria in defining “noun” vs. “verb”.

The Structure of r-Nominals in -nie/-cie in Polish and the Factors Conditioning Their Emergence

The aim of this paper is twofold: to establish the structure of deverbal nominals in -nie and -cie which lack argument structure and function as Simple Event and Result nominals, and to specify the factors conditioning their emergence. The proposed analysis is framed in Borer’s exo-skeletal model supplemented by elements of the nanosyntactic approach. The Polish data are puzzling since R-nominals in -nie/-cie show morphological evidence of the verbalising layer in the guise of a theme element alongside aspectual marking. The proposed account includes the aspectual projection of inner aspect in their structure and argues that the licensing of the internal argument is not related to the presence of verbalising morphology or of the inner aspect projection, which in the case of Polish can be multi-layered.. For an R-nominal to emerge, the structure must not contain the projection of viewpoint aspect responsible for the licensing of the full argumental complex. The presence of the VP layer accounts for the ambiguity between simple event and concrete reading. A stem-based R-nominal will arise if there is no root-based R-nominal, e.g. (s)kaleczyć ‘hurt’ —*(s)kalecz—skaleczenie ‘wound’ vs. (po)dzielić ‘divide’—podział ‘division’. Only R-nominals in -nie and -cie will be possible where the presence of an overt verbaliser with a root merged with a nominal or adjectival functor blocks the formation of root-based nominals, e.g. łysy ‘bald’—(wy)łysieć ‘go bald’—wyłysienie ‘a bald patch’—*(wy)łys.

On passive verbs with the marker <em>-ra / -rye</em> in Tundra Nenets

The article deals with the verbs formed with the unproductive marker -ra / -rye in Tundra Nenets. Such verbs are intransitive, perfective, and are inflected, as a rule, in the forms of the reflexive conjugation. Morphosyntactically, the function of this marker in combination with transitive verbs can be considered passive. The addition of the marker is also possible for some intransitive verbs and nominal stems. Denominal verbs show a double manifestation of “passive” morphology and allow to promote into the subject position a participant that is absent in the argument structure. Semantically, the majority of passive derivatives are united by their use mainly in adversative contexts. The emergence of adversative usage may be related to the presence of causative-passive syncretism and P-lability.

Affix polyfunctionality in French deverbal nominalizations

This article investigates the semantic polyfunctionality of affixes, i.e. their ability to serve a variety of distinct semantic functions. Based on the analysis of a sample of 3,091 deverbal nouns ending with 46 different suffixes in French, the study examines the diversity of semantic functions realized by deverbal suffixes, the distribution of these functions across suffixes and the relationships that may exist between different functions. It appears that polyfunctionality is widespread among French deverbal suffixes and involves a large number of semantic functions, with highly variable realization frequency. Several fundamental aspects of affix polyfunctionality are further highlighted. A probabilistic analysis shows that polyfunctionality can be driven by non-arbitrary semantic associations between functions. A hierarchy of functions can also be postulated depending on whether they can be instantiated by monosemous or only polysemous derivatives. In addition, polyfunctionality appears to be inseparable from rivalry relationships and to determine the degree of rivalry between affixes. Overall, the study illustrates that affix polyfunctionality is governed by systematic organizing principles whose ramifications touch on lexical ambiguity and morphological competition.

Noun2Verb: Probabilistic Frame Semantics for Word Class Conversion

Abstract Humans can flexibly extend word usages across different grammatical classes, a phenomenon known as word class conversion. Noun-to-verb conversion, or denominal verb (e.g., to Google a cheap flight), is one of the most prevalent forms of word class conversion. However, existing natural language processing systems are impoverished in interpreting and generating novel denominal verb usages. Previous work has suggested that novel denominal verb usages are comprehensible if the listener can compute the intended meaning based on shared knowledge with the speaker. Here we explore a computational formalism for this proposal couched in frame semantics. We present a formal framework, Noun2Verb, that simulates the production and comprehension of novel denominal verb usages by modeling shared knowledge of speaker and listener in semantic frames. We evaluate an incremental set of probabilistic models that learn to interpret and generate novel denominal verb usages via paraphrasing. We show that a model where the speaker and listener cooperatively learn the joint distribution over semantic frame elements better explains the empirical denominal verb usages than state-of-the-art language models, evaluated against data from (1) contemporary English in both adult and child speech, (2) contemporary Mandarin Chinese, and (3) the historical development of English. Our work grounds word class conversion in probabilistic frame semantics and bridges the gap between natural language processing systems and humans in lexical creativity.

Fugu Me! Roots and Denominal Verb Productivity: New Data

Abstract-earhas become a highly productive option in denominal verb formation in Spanish. The unparalleled productivity and range of verb classes obtained invites us to revisit fundamental questions on verb formation and interpretation: e.g., which domain (lexical/syntactic/semantic) primarily drives and constrains denominal verb use and interpretation, which verb types are possible, whether or not acanonical use constraintcan correctly predict and capture the role of the root in verb meaning, as assumed in mainstream accounts. Based on analytical and (preliminary) experimental data, we consider syntactic and semantic (aspectual) behavior of denominal verbs, including both traditional and novel verbs with -ear. We observe that: (i) productive types include verb classes untapped in the existent literature; (ii) the range of verb classes obtained coincides with a significant range of possible interpretations and uses, suggesting that a ‘same’ verb (lexical and morphotactic composition) can be associated with distinct structural configurations; (iii) the interpretation is highly sensitive to the grammatical context. We argue that (i) verb meaning and behavior are not deterministically driven by one (e.g., lexical/conceptual) domain but rather in interaction; (ii) syntax plays a nontrivial role in verb meaning/interpretation; (iii) non-univocity arises as a distinctive property ofearverbs.

Directionality in cross-categorial derivations

What exactly is the relationship between the verb hammer and the noun hammer? Is one derived from the other, are both derived from a common source, and how can we tell? This article provides an overview of recent generative approaches to derivational directionality and reviews the different kinds of answers given to such questions, considering the diachrony and synchrony of deverbal nouns, deadjectival and denominal verbs, and similar forms. We critically survey the main empirical points argued for in different languages and evaluate the different analyses that have been proposed. We highlight where progress has been made and what open questions still remain, proposing that formal accounts can be seen as implementing one of two concrete processes, which we term Affix Imposition and Root Augmentation.

AFFIXES FORMING INFLECTIONAL AND DERIVATIONAL VERBS IN KULISUSU LANGUAGE

Kulisusu language is the main communication tool in religious, traditional, and cultural activities. Development and study of regional languages to improve the language quality is needed. This is one way to respond to linguistic problems from phonemes, morphemes, words, phrases, clauses, sentences to discourse. However, this study only focuses on morphemes in form of affixes. Therefore, the researcher is interested in describing affixes forming inflectional and derivational verbs in Kulisusu language. This is beneficial for being inventory materials to develop Kulisusu language. This is a field research using qualitative descriptive method. Data collection was by interviewing, listening, and recording technique. The results showed affixes in Kulisusu language can form inflectional and derivational verbs. Inflectional verbs have 19 affix forms consisting of 8 prefix forms like: po-, mo-, pe-, me-, te-, in-, peka-, andmeka-,2 infix forms like: -um-, and-in-7 suffix forms like: -po, -mo, -o, -ako, -aka, -sakoand –si, and 2 confix forms namely: pa-oandpe-mo. Derivative verbs are divided into two types, namely, denominal verbs and deadjectival verbs. Denominal verbs have 12 affix forms consisting of 5 prefix forms namely: po-, mo-, pe-, me-,andko-,2 infix forms like: -um-and-in-, 2 suffix forms like: -akoand-aka,and 3 confix forms such as: po-i, mo-iandi-o.Deadjectival verbs have 5 affix forms consisting of 3 prefix forms namely: pa-, pompa-andmompa-, 1 suffix form like: -kiand 1 confix form like: pa-o.