Syntactic Properties Of Verbs Research Articles

Uttryck för VÄG med ackusativ singular i sydsamiska

The use of object-like expressions to encode an extension in space, along which a movement is performed, is generally widespread in Saami as a whole. In this article, the term path refers to such extensions in space. The study deals specifically with the use of the accusative singular to encode path in South Saami. One of the aims of the study is to investigate the semantic properties of nouns that, inflected for the accusative singular, appear in expressions of path. Another aim is to examine how such nouns semantically and syntactically interact with spatial adverbs to encode path, and how these adverbs relate to adpositions. In addition, the article directs attention to the semantic and syntactic properties of verbs which appear in clauses where nouns inflected for the accusative singular encode path. This short study is based on a quite limited sample and aims merely to highlight features of this phenomenon, which merit future studies.

The VP in language contact: on creation event lexicalization in Canadian French

Abstract The effects of language contact on semantic and syntactic properties of verbs can be considered as not yet extensively studied. This contribution is concerned with French as a typical verb-framed language that cannot freely combine manner verbs with result-denoting arguments within the VP. Drawing on creation events, the study explores if restrictions can loosen, and lexicalization preferences change when French is in contact to a satellite-framed language like English. Judgment data from bilingual speakers of Canadian French (CaFr) are compared to data from speakers of Hexagonal French (HFr). The analysis addresses how selective copying from English is relevant for the acceptability of different VPs and considers how the factors of individual and social language dominance might influence the judgments within the CaFr group. The results show that French manner verbs and direct objects can be coerced into creation readings in both test groups as long as only the selectional restrictions of a particular verb have to be adapted. When, however, a general constraint of French has to be overridden to arrive at a creation reading, acceptability is higher in the CaFr group, who can resort to combinatorial copying from English. Furthermore, VPs in which manner is not lexicalized in the verb are somewhat more accepted in the HFr group than in the CaFr group. Within the CaFr group, certain cases of satellite framing are judged somewhat better by speakers from an English dominant region, while VPs without a manner verb reach slightly higher scores among speakers from Quebec. It is thus shown how structural and speaker-related factors can affect the acceptability of event descriptions in language contact.

Prices are rising, wages are falling: Argument structure of verbs denoting ‘increase’ and ‘decrease’ in the Russian language

Syntactic properties of verbs in their metaphorical meanings are often explained as inherited from direct meanings. Using Russian verbs denoting increase and decrease (grow, fall, lower, etc.) as an example, we demonstrate that cognitive factors also influence syntactic properties of metaphorical meanings. The study is based on the data from the Russian National Corpus and RuSkell. We use collocation analysis to compare the semantic and syntactic properties of these verbs in their direct and figurative meanings. We show that in direct meanings their syntactic properties differ, while in figurative meanings they are considerably closer, which excludes inheritance as the primary defining factor. All the verbs have four semantic arguments with the same morphosyntactic realization: parameter (A1), initial value of parameter (A2), final value of parameter (A3) and difference (A4): Oil prices (A1) fell by fifty percent (A4), from one hundred dollars a barrel (A2) to fifty (A3). Frequency analysis reveals a disproportion in the implementation of syntactic arguments, namely, the expression of difference ( increase by fifty percent, decrease by ten times ) prevails over the expression of the initial and final values of the parameter ( increase from forty to one hundred points ). This predominance of the difference argument is due to its cognitive advantages. Expressing difference is lexically more economical, while also more illustrative of the scale of the change: The Federal Tax Service has reported that tax collections have doubled . Theoretically, our research shows that semantic proximity alone does not guarantee syntactic homogeneity (for example, Russian synonyms slozhitʹ and pribavit to add inherit different syntactic properties from their respective direct meanings): similarity of syntactic properties may have a cognitive foundation. Our practical outcome is a lexicographic template for increase and decrease verbs.

Syntactic Properties of Verbs with Genitive in German

Syntactic Properties of Verbs with Genitive in German

Deverbal nominals derived from intransitive state verbs in isiXhosa: A Generative Lexicon approach

The relationship between deverbative noun classification and the semantic meaning of the derived deverbal nominal has been the focus of many studies in linguistics from very divergent perspectives. This article maintains that the descriptive analysis of deverbal nominals in Bantu languages does not fully interrogate the predicate argument structure of the verbs that host these deverbal nominals. An investigation of how the syntactic properties of verbs from which deverbal nominals are derived is invoked within the paradigm of decompositional lexical semantics so as to explain the argument structure, event structure and qualia properties of deverbal nominals. This is demonstrated in this article, firstly, by the Bantu languages of sub-Saharan Africa. Secondly, this article explores the descriptive nature of deverbal nominals as they manifest themselves either inflectionally or derivationally in the South African Bantu languages, with emphasis on isiXhosa. Thirdly, deverbal nominals drawing on Pustejovsky’s Generative Lexicon paradigm are analysed. Lastly, the findings of the analyses of deverbal nominals derived from intransitive state verbs demonstrate the need for further research on deverbal nominals.

The Role of NP Animacy and Expletives in Verb Learning

I describe the results of an experiment that bears on how children learn the lexical and syntactic properties of abstract verbs (seem, try) in order to distinguish the subclasses of raising (seem) and control verbs (try). Previous research suggested that an inanimate subject in certain contexts leads children to suppose that the subject and main verb are not thematically related, and thus that the verb is a raising verb. Here I address two alternative possibilities. One possibility is that children lack the adult-like restriction that subject and verb must match in animacy, which I counter with evidence from the developmental literature. The other possibility, addressed by the experiment, is that children's control verbs are thematically related to their subject but do not require the subject to be animate. I will argue, instead, that the presence of an expletive/inanimate subject coerces a raising analysis of the verb, and concomitant “bleached” semantics of the verb in that context.

Verbes à complément locatif temporel en portugais

Summary This paper provides a sketch of the main syntactic properties of verbs selecting a time‑related noun as their argument, in order to be able to distinguish them, during automatic text processing, from formally identical adverbs that present the internal structure of a noun phrase.

The Use of Different Cases with Russian Verbs of Similar Meaning

This paper looks at verbs that convey a similar meaning but govern different cases. The study is based on a sample of verbs and word combinations that have the semantic component 'to teach'. The use of cases with such verbs is explained through the metaphorical conceptualization of teaching in Russian. The cases governed by the verbs with this component depend on the understanding of teaching as either giving, guiding, forming, filling, feeding, or lighting. Different metaphorical concepts cause differences in the syntactic properties of verbs with the 'teach' component.

The acquisition of semantics-syntax correspondences and verb frequencies in ESL materials

This article provides an analysis of the frequency of verbs and their syntactic requirements in Interchange (Richards et al., 1991), a popular series of textbooks for English as a second language (ESL). Current theoretical approaches to verb classes permit a fine-grained crosslinguistic description of differences in semantics-syntax correspondences for verbs; in this article, transitive verbs are split into five subcategories and intransitives are split into two categories. A corpus analysis of Interchange suggests that ESL materials may under-represent some of the verb classes that are known to cause learners difficulty. These findings suggest that weak contrastive analysis and a more careful consideration of syntactic properties of verbs could be useful to teachers and materials writers.

Synonymie syntaxique et classification des verbes français

From an electronic dictionary of 25.610 verbal entries, based on syntactic properties of verbs, their lexical components and their derivations, a classification of French verbs was established, which groups verbs into 14 large semantico-syntactic classes and 248 syntactic types. Thus emerges a hierarchy of degrees of syntactic synonymy.