Basic Verbs Research Articles

Are Dispositional Adjectives a Case of Transposition? – Semantic Effects of -liw(y) Attachment to Verbal Bases in Polish

Studies in Polish Linguistics » Volume 13 » Issue 2 » Are Dispositional Adjectives a Case of Transposition? – Semantic Effects of -liw(y) Attachment to Verbal Bases in Polish A A A

The verbal prefix u- in Croatian and Bulgarian

Abstract This study compares the semantic networks of the verbal prefix u- in two South Slavic languages, Bulgarian (blg.) and Croatian (cro.), in a cognitive linguistics framework using two databases of prefixed verbs drawn from dictionaries and corpora. We point to similarities and overlapping categories in the semantic networks of u- in blg. and cro., as well as to differences. When accounting for the differences, we consider prefixes semantically similar to u- (within one language and in both languages) that combine with the same base verbs forming either prefixed near-synonyms (e.g., blg. uvehna, zavehna, izvehna ‘wither, fade’; cro. umastiti, omastiti, zamastiti ‘grease, stain’) or prefixed verbs that are only seemingly near-synonyms (e.g., blg. ukaža ‘indicate, show’, okaža se ‘turn out’; cro. ocrniti ‘denigrate, slander’, ucrniti (se) ‘color black, wear black’). We examine how the meaning networks of individual semantically related prefixes (e.g., u- and za-, iz-) overlap within one language and across the two languages, as well as how different construals of the same event affect the prefix choice.

Central Delta languages: An overview

This paper presents an overview of the phonology, morphology and syntax of Central Delta languages. It also provides information on the geo-linguistic, demographic and sociolinguistic situation of these languages. It notes that Central Delta languages have a 20-vowel system, which divides into two sets of 10 vowels distinguished by pharyngeal size. The consonant systems of these languages range between 22 and 27, showing alternation between some pairs of consonants. Central Delta languages are noted to be rich in nominal and verbal morphologies, showing evidence of prefixal noun classification and morphological marking of nominal and verbal categories. The pronominal systems of these languages make a three-way number-person-case distinction with some of them formally distinguishing between inclusive and exclusive in their first-person plural forms. Common syntactic features observed in these languages include subject–object–verb basic word order and serial verb constructions. The paper highlights the fact that mother-tongue speakers of Central Delta languages also speak one or more other languages and that the daily exposure of Central Delta languages and their speakers to more powerful languages around them makes them endangered. Furthermore, the paper recommends that a survey be undertaken to determine the level of endangerment of Central Delta languages.

Testing an AAC system that transforms pictograms into natural language with persons with cerebral palsy

ABSTRACTIn this article, we describe a compansion system that transforms the telegraphic language that comes from the use of pictogram-based augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) into natural language. The system was tested with four participants with severe cerebral palsy and ranging degrees of linguistic competence and intellectual disabilities. Participants had used pictogram-based AAC at least for the past 30 years each and presented a stable linguistic profile. During tests, which consisted of a total of 40 sessions, participants were able to learn new linguistic skills, such as the use of basic verb tenses, while using the compansion system, which proved a source of motivation. The system can be adapted to the linguistic competence of each person and required no learning curve during tests when none of its special features, like gender, number, verb tense, or sentence type modifiers, were used. Furthermore, qualitative and quantitative results showed a mean communication rate increase of 41.59%, compared to the same communication device without the compansion system, and an overall improvement in the communication experience when the output is in natural language. Tests were conducted in Catalan and Spanish.

The Structure of Domain Entity Attribute Semantic Knowledge Base for Natural Language Processing

The abstraction of semantic knowledge in terms of entities, attributes, and action relationships can completely define two semantic forms of knowledge: picture and situation. The knowledge base proposed in this paper contained the entries that correspond to the components of the real world and the organizational network in which those entries are associated with the situation. The knowledge base contains situation verb base, entity base, attribute base and attribute value base. Those terms are organized into a network according to the external feature of the entity and the relationship between entities and attributes. The knowledge base also defines two sets of knowledge networks. One is the entity attribute knowledge frame which is integrated by the entity as a unit. It defines the frame of an entity corresponding to the real object. It embeds the slot into the entity, and points out the possible values of each attribute slot. The other is the collocation frame which is integrated by the verb as the core unit. The knowledge resource is stored in XML format which could hierarchically represent the structure of knowledge framework. It could support the addition and deletion of knowledge resources making the continuous construction and expansion of the knowledge base possible. The abstracts of knowledge in this paper reproduced the complete process of language comprehension, which can be well applied to language analysis.

Valency and expectation in Bantu applicatives

Abstract Bantu applicatives are standardly analysed syntactically, as encoding a change in valency. However, in many cases applicatives do not change valency, but are rather related to a change in interpretation. In particular pragmatic functions of applicatives related to focus and emphasis are often noted in the description of individual languages, but are very rarely reflected in typological or theoretical work. To address this problem, this paper develops a pragmatic analysis of applicatives, in which applicatives signal that the action denoted by the base verb is being carried out in some way remarkably, and so differently from normal expectations about the action. Pragmatic effects are found with all uses of applicatives, and may lead to a change in valency, or not. Absence of a change in valency is found in particular with locative and instrument applicatives, while benefactive applicatives almost always entail a change in valency. This is related to the thematic hierarchy: Beneficiaries occupy a high position in the thematic hierarchy and have a strong effect on the expectedness of the action expressed. The advantage of our analysis is that it addresses both interpretational and structural aspects of applicative constructions and provides a unified explanation for them.

-ee derivatives in English: Focusing on dual role of -ee suffix

This paper argues three things : (a) -ee is morphological counterpart of syntactic passive morpheme -ed, following Oegglie(1988). Unlike -ed, -ee is supposed to do a dual job for deriving words such as sittee, whose base verb is stative and intransitive. -ee must absorb an external theta role only when there is any internal theta role, resulting in deriving a word to denote a person or a thing that undergoes passivity such as advisee, while -ee can not do so when there is none, (b) -ee English suffix is not sensitive to the transitivity of verb, but to the feasibility of having a dynamic sense of verb, which is acting as a base to -ee. It is because there are many -ee derivatives whose bases are intransitive verbs such as arrivee, and (c) the monopolic status of -ee in English for derivatives with patient reading is likely to lead over-generation, which is assumed to be inevitable for the sake of fewer constraints on -ee of our analysis compared to those of the previous ones and the over-generated possible -ee derivatives are subject to pragmatic contexts for their existence in actual speech community. The pragmatic context is to be assumed to function as a filter in the sense of Halle (1974) in order to allow over-generation of -ee suffix. (Chonbuk National University)

INFLEKSI VERBA DASAR BERPOLA FA‘ALA-YAF‘ULU DALAM KAMUS AL-MUNAWWIR ARAB-INDONESIA: TINJAUAN MORFOLOGI

The changing process of word occured in three forms : the basic forms , the lexical identity , and the word category status. The process that resulted other forms of the word with sama lexical identity is caled by flexion and inflexion , or at-tashrif in arabic term. There are supporting processes in the changing of Arabic verb such as i‘lal (vocalization), idgham (elipsis), dan ibdal (mutation). The research explains about changing of the basic verbs of form patterned faala–yaf'ulu in inflection in al-Munawwir Arabic-Indonesia dictionary. The providing of data in this research through observation by using languages of basic trilitteral verbs in al-Munawwir Arabic-Indonesia dictionary is using taking apart as basic technique, and noted as advanced techniques. Distributional methods were used to analyze the data, by using the technique for direct items as the basic techniques, as well as the technique of disappeared and change as advanced technique. The result of the basic verb inflection patterned fa'ala-yaf'ulu in al-Munawwir ArabicIndonesia dictionary itheproces of changing the form of verbs in fa'ala-yaf'ulu patterned inflection is i‘lal "defection‟ and idgham ‘incorporation‟. As for the least amount found on the letter waw number of 2 verbs, and there are two letter with no verb fa'ala-yaf'ulu those are letter zha' and ya'.<br /><br />

In Search of Basic Verbs for Japanese Learners of EFL at the Junior High School Level : A View From "Coreness"

In Search of Basic Verbs for Japanese Learners of EFL at the Junior High School Level : A View From "Coreness"

Bezručův »Kovkop«

Composing the poem Metal Digger (Kovkop) Petr Bezruč used those tectonic means: repetition of a basic verb, enumerative listing, asked questions and mini-stories. A picture of blood takes an important role as well as the refrain and the title of the poem.

Event delimitation in Mandarin: The case of diminishing reduplication

Mandarin verbal reduplication is generally regarded as a phenomenon conveying an aspectual value since it temporally bounds the event expressed by the base verb, thus resulting in a (counter-iconic) ‘diminishing’ semantics. In this paper, we put forward a novel syntactic account of diminishing reduplication in Mandarin, which derives the aspectual semantic properties of these constructs from the syntax of their event structure. In particular, we outline an analysis of reduplication as the spell out of two copies of the same lexical item, whereby the reduplicant is the lower copy sitting as the complement of the verbal head (higher copy), and displaying the distributional and interpretive properties of ‘weak’ verbal classifiers. Focusing on the status of the reduplicant, we present distributional, interpretive and diachronic evidence in support of our analysis

Asking and answering: A contrastive study of English and Swedish basic communication verbs

This article presents a contrastive study of the English verbs ask and answer and their Swedish correspondents based on data from the English Swedish Parallel Corpus (ESPC), which is bi-directional and contains Swedish and English original texts and their corresponding translations. As a background, a short overview is given of Verbal Communication Verbs (VCVs) in general with brief discussions of speech act theory (Searle), direct and reported speech and conceptual frames (FrameNet) and their syntactic realizations. The contrastive study is concerned with networks of polysemy and the relationships of various senses with differing syntactic realizations across languages. The senses of ask are primarily distributed between two verbs in Swedish: fråga ‘ask a question’ and be ‘request (politely)’ but even some verbs with more specific meanings are involved. The concept of answering forms a conceptual network which is similar in English and Swedish but contrasts with respect to the way meanings are divided up between various verbs. English has a number of verbs such as answer, reply, respond, correspond, retort and rejoin, whereas Swedish to a great extent relies on one verb (svara) and its morphological derivations: besvara, ansvara, motsvara, försvara. In the Conclusion, pedagogical applications of the study are briefly discussed.

Universals of causative and anticausative verb formation and the spontaneity scale

AbstractIn this paper, I formulate and explain a number of universal generalizations about the formation of causative verbs (overtly marked verbs with causal meaning) and anticausative verbs (overtly marked verbs with noncausal meaning). Given the “spontaneity scale” of basic verb meanings (transitive > unergative > automatic unaccusative > costly unaccusative > agentful), we can say that verb pairs with a noncausal verb higher on the scale tend to be causative pairs, and verb pairs with a noncausal verb lower on the scale tend to be anticausative pairs. I propose that these generalizations can be subsumed under form-frequency correspondence: That transitive base verbs tend to form causatives (often analytic causatives) is because they rarely occur in causal contexts, and the fact that unaccusative verbs tend to be coded as anticausatives is because they frequently occur in causal contexts, and special marking is required for the rarer and less expected situation.

The morphosyntax of aspect stacking in Northeastern Neo-Aramaic

Many Northeastern Neo-Aramaic languages have two distinct strategies for marking perfective aspect, both morphosyntactically restricted in different ways. The canonical perfective strategy – the perfective verb base – typically bans certain types of objects, while the secondary perfective strategy – the imperfective verb base bearing the perfective prefix qam- – requires a certain type of object. This paper deals mainly with the secondary perfective strategy, attempting to understand and formally characterize its distribution and structure. While this phenomenon is well-known in the descriptive and historical literature (see Coghill 1999 and references therein), it has never before received theoretical treatment. I argue that qam- is a high perfective aspect marker analogous to certain so-called “superlexical” prefixes in Slavic languages, which have a perfectivizing function and select for an imperfective stem (Babko-Malaya 1999; 2003; Ramchand 2004; Romanova 2004; Tatevosov 2008; Gribanova 2013; i.a.). Slavic-like stacking of high aspects is thus shown to exist in languages that lack a corresponding system of rich lexical aspect (cf. the Slavic “lexical” prefixes). The secondary perfective in Northeastern Neo-Aramaic also illuminates another cross-linguistic pattern: apparent temporal or aspectual mismatches between the clause level and the verb-stem/base level, like those found in Indo-Iranian languages (Haig 2008), need not imply that the verb bases/stems lack tense and aspect. Finally, I show that the secondary perfective furnishes a new type of argument for the syntactic nature of φ-agreement.

Some characteristics of deverbal nominals in Slavic and Romance languages

In this paper we will investigate the nature of deverbal nominals across languages. Deverbal nouns are typically classified according to their word-formation model: affixation and conver-sion. Our study will compare the word formation of deverbal nominals in Slavic (Croatian, Slovenian and Polish) and Romance languages (Italian, French and Spanish) in order to show (i) that affixation corresponds to a specific mode of morphological operations and (ii) that the differences and similarities between deverbal nominals of these two language families follow from the properties of the base verbs. Furthermore, our analysis will try to shed some light on the distinction between nouns and verbs. The paper comprises three major thematic parts. The first part briefly reviews the basic notions and theoretical assumptions of Generative Grammar regarding word formation. We have especially tried to explain those notions that we draw from Distributed Morphology. This part further exposes the theoretical framework that is used in this paper. In the second part, deverbal nominals in Slavic languages are analysed and de-scribed. We primarily investigate the Slavic languages, since in these languages morphology plays a larger role in the construction of deverbal nouns. The third part contains an investiga-tion of the phrasal structure of nominalizations across the Romance languages. We close the work with a general conclusion about the behaviour of deverbal nouns in these two groups of languages. We concentrate mainly on the differences between the phrasal architecture of nom-inalizations and correspondent verbal constructions.

Comparing core-image-based basic verb learning in an EFL junior high school: Learner-centered and teacher-centered approaches

The present study investigated the effects of two types of core-image-based basic verb learning approaches: the learner-centered and the teacher-centered approaches. The learner-centered approach was an activity in which participants found semantic relationships among several definitions of each basic target verb through a picture-elucidated card game. By contrast, the teacher-centered approach involved explicit instruction from the teacher explaining how several definitions of the basic target verbs are interrelated. A total of 241 Japanese EFL (English as a foreign language) junior high school students acted as participants in this comparative study to determine the superior approach. At the end of the treatment period, a short questionnaire was distributed. A two-way repeated measures analysis of variance (ANOVA) revealed that the learner-centered approach was more effective than the teacher-centered approach with regard to both retention rates for learned definitions and accuracy rates for novel definitions of the basic target verbs. The results of paired t-tests for the questionnaire also support these findings. Considering the results, it can be argued that basic verbs may be best taught through a learner-centered collaborative approach, with conventional teacher-centered explicit instruction as a supplement.

A Study Concerning the Perception of Verbs of Motion in Both the Korean and Polish Languages

‘이동 동사’는 언어학적으로 매우 좁게도 그리고 넓게도 해석할 수 있는 동사 군이다. 이 연구에서는 한국어와 폴란드어처럼 인접하지 않은 낯선 언어 관계에 서 이동 동사는 어떤 의미 차이를 가지고 있을지 인식조사를 통해 살펴보았다. 예컨대 한국어의 대표적인 이동 동사인 ‘가다’, ‘오다’의 경우에는 ‘방향’이 대립 을 이루지만, 폴란드어 ‘iść(걸어서 가다)’와 ‘chodzić(걸어 다니다)’의 경우에는 ‘방식’의 대립이 두드러진다. 또 한국어는 공간과 시간 중 공간의 중심이 두드러 지지만 폴란드어는 공간 못지않게 시간도 중요한 개념인 것으로 나타났다. 이러 한 차이가 양국 언어 사용자의 인식에서 어떻게 나타나는지를 살펴보고자 한다.This study focus upon the perception of ‘motion’ and how it is expressed in both the Korean and Polish languages. Research was carried out based on a survey in which key verbs of motion were proposed by Korean and Polish students. The most popular choices for motion in Korean are 16 verbs referring to direction, manner, means of transport, frequency as well as superordinate verbs (e.g. ‘umjigida’). In contrast there are 21 verbs of motion which are most popularly used by Polish students. These refer mostly to manner, but there are also verbs with additional components of meaning such as ‘pleasure’ (e.g. ‘tańczyć’) or ‘purpose/result’ (e.g. ‘uciekać’), superordinate verbs (e.g. ‘przemieszczać się’) and verbs referring to direction. Detailed analyses are made and the contrasts between basic verbs of motion in both languages are discussed.

The Syntactic Structures of Morphological Causative Constructions in Korean: Focusing on the Agentive Verb Bases. Studies in Modern Grammar

The Syntactic Structures of Morphological Causative Constructions in Korean: Focusing on the Agentive Verb Bases. Studies in Modern Grammar

Аспектуальная парадигма базового глагола как его классификационный признак

ABSTRACTSvitlana Sokolova: The Aspectual Paradigm of the Basic Verb As Its Classification FeatureThe article discusses the concept of the verb’s aspectual paradigm as a part of its derivation paradigm, including verb derivatives that differ from the primary verb in aspect and/or manner of action (Aktionsart). Focus is put on semantic features of the basic verb that enable it to combine with affixes, carriers of aspectual semantics, and to form a certain type of aspectual paradigm. Thus, lexical-semantic variation causes changes in the aspectual paradigm of the verb.Aspectual paradigms related to the semantics of the verb show little variation between the closely related Ukrainian and Russian languages, although in certain cases aspectual paradigms will depend on the combinability of stems with affixes and on the affixes themselves.Aspectual features of verbs must be taken into account in the description of both derivational paradigms and word-building units, as well as in general lexicographical practice.

La concurrence des procédés de nominalisation événementielle en français, en comparaison avec l’allemand

This article provides a semantic comparison of several of the most common event nominalization procedures of French and German. It is based on the hypothesis that each language disposes of a unique paradigm of event nominalization procedures, which differ slightly with regard to certain semantic-pragmatic features. The nominalization procedures which are taken into consideration for French are ‑age, ‑ation, ‑ment, ‑ee and the nominalized infinitive, while ‑ung, the nominalized infinitive, and root conversions are discussed for German. The paradigmatic oppositions existing between the corresponding procedures are defined for each language using an inventory of six distinct semantic-pragmatic features. Four of these features relate to aspectual values, while the two remaining features deal with distinctions relating to the perspectivation of the events denoted by the base verbs (i.e. active or passive perspective, demotion of event participants).