Verbs In Question Research Articles

Laz positional verbs: semantics and use with inanimate Figures

In this article, we discuss the meaning and use of positional verbs in the South-Caucasian language Laz. Positional verbs are defined as those verbs which — in combination with one of several locational verbal prefixes (preverbs) — may appear in the basic construction that functions as an answer to a “where” question, the so-called basic locative construction (BLC). Within this class of verbs, we pay particular attention to those positionals which are used regularly in our data to describe the configuration of inanimate movable objects. Laz is shown to be a multiverb language, i.e., a language that uses a comparatively large set of verbs in the BLC. The fourteen verbs in question are PRV- dgun ‘stand’, PRV- ren ‘stand’, PRV- zun ‘lie’, PRV- xen ‘sit, stay’, PRV- bɣun ‘be located as mass’, PRV- mpiy ‘be spread’, PRV- sun ‘be smeared’, PRV- tun ‘cover’, PRV- bun ‘hang’, PRV- nʒoy ‘stick, be stuck’, PRV- n un ‘be dipped’, PRV- abun ‘stick to, be sticky’, PRV- orun ‘be bound’, PRV- gzun ‘burn’. The semantics and the use of these verbs are described in some detail including nontypical configurations, which trigger variation among speakers due to alternative categorizations and prototype effects.

A Paradigmatic View of Spanish amenazar ‘to threaten’ and prometer ‘to promise’

Besides their common lexical reading, the Spanish verbs amenazar ‘threaten’ and prometer ‘promise’ can also yield a modal reading. The shift from the former reading to the latter implies a change from a control structure to a raising structure and involves grammaticalization, more specifically auxiliation, which ends up in a layered co-existence of the two (or more) constructions. This paper is mainly concerned with the syntactic and semantic categorization of the grammaticalized quasi-modals amenazar and prometer. Generative accounts have focused on the difference between raising and control, but have not addressed the differences between the two verbs. This paper highlights that modal amenazar faces less constraints than modal prometer . Furthermore, the account presented below will show that epistemic and evidential auxiliaries have scope over the qualification expressed by modal amenazar and prometer, and are therefore not to be called “epistemic”. The paper also deals with the tense restrictions that these verbs undergo. Tenses such as the present perfect are not available in modal constructions with amenazar and prometer because of the activation of agentive patterns inherent to the lexical semantics of the verbs in question. The tense criterion is valid for verbs for which the grammaticalized form is not the most frequent one, but it does not account for true modals in Spanish and other Romance languages. The infinitive criterion turns out to be a good alternative.

Alternances casuelles, verbes supports et quantification

In three types of sentences with predicative nouns in French, the arguments of the support verb can occupy different syntactic slots : (1) Luc donne des conseils à Max (2) Luc abreuve Max de conseils (3) Max croule sous les conseils de Luc This paper evaluates the amount of this type of nouns and verbs in the lexicon of French and studies their syntactic and semantic properties. The verbs in question have a metaphoric sense of quantity. The predicative nouns possible in this type of constructions constitute semantic classes according to the metaphoric meaning of the verbs they accept.

Francophones face aux cas de l’allemand: un cas désespéré?

It is a well-known fact that learning to use the correct cases in German represents a major problem for speakers of French. The main difficulty resides in the fact that, when constructing an utterance in German as a foreign language, learners have to deal simultaneously, so to speak, with both syntactical and morphological constraints. The former concern the choice of the correct case or preposition, depending on the valency of the verb in question; the latter concern the concrete marking of case in the noun phrase which depends on various factors. The present study is based on a corpus of oral language production from pupils at lycées (upper-secondary schools) in the Suisse Romande. It deals with the main types of errors occurring in the area of verb complementation, the most frequent of which are categorized and illustrated with typical examples. In attempting to account for these errors, we find that mother-tongue interference proves to be an important but by no means the only source. The paper concludes with some concrete suggestions for both learners and teachers of German as a foreign language.

Francophones face aux cas de l’allemand: un cas désespéré?

It is a well-known fact that learning to use the correct cases in German represents a major problem for speakers of French. The main difficulty resides in the fact that, when constructing an utterance in German as a foreign language, learners have to deal simultaneously, so to speak, with both syntactical and morphological constraints. The former concern the choice of the correct case or preposition, depending on the valency of the verb in question; the latter concern the concrete marking of case in the noun phrase which depends on various factors. The present study is based on a corpus of oral language production from pupils at lycées (upper-secondary schools) in the Suisse Romande. It deals with the main types of errors occurring in the area of verb complementation, the most frequent of which are categorized and illustrated with typical examples. In attempting to account for these errors, we find that mother-tongue interference proves to be an important but by no means the only source. The paper concludes with some concrete suggestions for both learners and teachers of German as a foreign language.

Scope and semimodal verbs: two approaches

In this paper I focus on scope phenomena connected with semimodal (and modal) verbs and mainly on the syntactic behaviour of these groups of verbs. One important question is: why can semimodal verbs (and modal verbs in epistemic use) not have perfect and future tense forms? Taking among other things Reichenbach's tense system as a starting point I try to point out that the interpretation of a semimodal or a modal in epistemic use is problematic 1. if there is more than one reference time/if the reference time is indefinite or 2. if the verb in question stands together with an auxiliary of future which has a certain modal meaning itself. The comparison of the treatment of these phenomena in the framework of the Semantic Syntax with a non transformational approach (fragment of a categorial grammar) shows, that some important transformational rules and principles easily and economically can be represented in a non transformational grammar. The transformational approach needs rules like RAISING and LOWERING (or at least one of the two, and in addition to this a rather extended set of rules) for the generation of sentences, while in the categorial system we need only two reduction laws. It has to be investigated whether and to what extent the formation and transformation rules in a transformational grammar on the one hand and the dominance / linear precedence rules together with the lexical entries on the other hand are equivalent.

Differences in the metrical behavior of Old English finite verbs: evidence for grammaticalization

This paper deals with the metrical behavior of a class of verbs in Old English whose descendants became the syntactically distinct auxiliaries of the modern period (have, be, may, will, shall, and associated forms). Contrasting two poems from the Old English period (Beowulf and The Battle of Maldon), I show that while the verbs in question show consistently stressed metrical placement in Beowulf, in Maldon they show a pronounced tendency to be placed in unstressed metrical positions, while verbs outside the eventual class of auxiliaries differ indiscriminately. In this way, the poetry suggests a phonological difference between pre-auxiliaries and other verbs perhaps centuries before corresponding morphological and syntactic differences fully emerged in the Middle and early Modern English periods.

The influence of semantic fit on on-line sentence processing.

The interactive influence of verb complement preferences and noun phrase semantic fit on resolution of temporary syntactic ambiguity was investigated in an eye movement experiment. The present semantic fit manipulation included noun phrases that fit well as direct objects of the verbs that they followed and noun phrases that were possible but less likely direct objects of the verbs in question. This contrasted with existing research on the use of verb complement preferences and semantic fit during sentence processing, in which processing of noun phrases that are possible direct objects has been compared with processing of noun phrases that are not possible direct objects of the verbs that they follow. Verb complement preference information and noun phrase semantic fit interacted at early stages of on-line sentence processing. Implications of these results for interactive and structural models of sentence processing are discussed.

Verbs of Inherently Directed Motion Are Compatible with Resultative Phrases

Levin and Rappaport Hovav (1995) (henceforth L&RH) show that resultative predication serves as a diagnostic for unaccusativity in English: if a resultative can be predicated of the single argument of a monadic verb, that verb is unaccusative. However, they point out that if a monadic verb cannot occur with a resultative, it does not necessarily follow that the verb in question is not unaccusative. For example, they conclude on the basis of (1) *Willa arrived breathless that the subclass of unaccusatives they call verbs of inherently directed motion (henceforth VIDMs) are incompatible with resultatives for independent reasons. In this squib I argue that L&RH's account for the apparent incompatibility of resultatives with VIDMs cannot be maintained and that the ungrammaticality exhibited by (1) is found with all unaccusatives. Thus, it cannot be concluded on the basis of this example that VIDMs are incompatible with resultatives. Given L&RH's explanation for the types of resultatives that can occur with inherently delimited verbs like breath, I argue that VIDMs, like all inherently delimited unaccusatives, are compatible with resultatives

Imperfective aspect zhe, agent deletion, and locative inversion in Mandarin Chinese

In this article I argue that not all the verbs that undergo locative inversion in Mandarin Chinese are intrinsically unaccusative as assumed in the literature. The fact that some transitive non-passivized verbs can undergo locative inversion is argued to be the result of morphological operations rather than the result of transitive alternation (cf. Cheng 1989). One such operation — that involving the morpheme zhe — is described here; I claim that it deletes the agent role of a verb if certain conditions are met, and allows the verb in question to satisfy the conditions on locative inversion (Bresnan and Kanerva 1989). I also argue that the zhe operation is not a variant of the passive operation, but a morphological operation in its own right.

Conjunctive and disjunctive verb forms in Setswana

Setswana has a distinction between the so-called ‘short form’ and ‘long form’ of the Present Indicative (positive) which at first seems to be isolated in the system of this language. Its function has so far not been adequately identified. The aim of this paper is to show that: a) several other tenses of the Setswana verb have tonal variations carrying a distinction functionally identical to that between the short form and the long form of the Positive Present of the Indicative; and b) this distinction between what could conveniently be termed ‘disjunctive’ and ‘conjunctive’ verb forms, has a pragmatic function; the use of conjunctive forms implies that the verb is not in final clause position and that the noun phrase or the adverb which follows it provides some new information. Disjunctive forms have the opposite implication: if a disjunctive verb form is followed by a noun phrase or an adverb which seems to belong to the clause in which the verb in question fulfils the predicaste function, this element i...

The Synchronic Status and the Evolution of the g in Spanish vengo, salgo, etc. Revisited

Contemporary Standard Spanish exhibits fourteen verbs with a segment realized as g occurring in the first person singular present indicative and throughout the subjunctive, but absent in other forms of the conjugational unit. These verbs include:' decir 'say,' hacer 'do,' and yacer 'lie,'2 which inherited g; as well as: asir 'seize,' caer 'fall,' oir 'listen,' poner 'put,' raer 'scrape,' roer 'gnaw,' salir 'leave,' tener 'have,' traer 'drag,' valer 'be worth,' and venir 'come,' to which it has been extended.4 Thus, taking hacer as an example, we find 1sg. hago in the present indicative, and 1sg. haga, 2sg. hagas, etc. in the present subjunctive, but forms without g elsewhere; e.g., 2sg. haces, 3sg. hace, etc. in the present indicative; 1sg. hice, 2sg. hiciste, etc. in the preterit; 1sg. hacia, 2sg. hacias, etc. in the imperfect. There are at least four issues relevant in the analysis of this segment: 1. its morphological status, 2. the reason for its extension, 3. the shared attribute of verbs to which it has been extended, and 4. the nature of the extension vis-A-vis the grammar. Of these, only the first has been given adequate attention, although there has been no attempt to view it in the context of an evolving system. The remaining issues have been dealt with only briefly, with casual references to analogy, but with no attempt to be explicit. The purpose of this paper is to address these issues in the context of an integrated discussion of the structure and evolution of the verbs in question.

Markedness and the acquisition of the English dative alternation by L2 speakers

A recent series of articles by Mazurkewich (1984a; 1984b; 1985) has suggested that the English dative alternation is acquired by L2 speakers in the sequence: [_ NP PP] → [_ NP NP]. This order of difficulty, it is argued in those papers, reflects an aspect of Universal grammar (UG): [_ NP PP] construc tions are part of core grammar and are therefore unmarked in UG, while [_ NP NP] constructions are peripheral and are therefore marked in UG. According to Mazurkewich, 'markedness' as defined by UG directly explains order of difficulty: constructions that are deemed marked in UG are more diffi cult for L2 speakers to acquire than unmarked constructions. The present study reexamines the acquisition of the English dative alternation across a wider range of dative verbs than was considered by Mazurkewich. A group of French L 1 subjects were given two different tasks: a grammaticality judgment task and a sentence construction task. It was found that although the results confirm an order of difficulty: [_ NP PP] → [_ NP NP], this developmental sequence conceals a more complex set of stages in the acquisition of the dative alternation involving features like the syntactic distributional subclass of the verb in ques tion, whether the dative object involved is a lexical NP or a pronoun, and the syllabic structure of the base form of the verb. These features, it turns out, interact to produce a multistaged developmental sequence. This finding calls into question the usefulness of a UG definition of markedness in explaining the L2 acquisition of the English dative alternation. An alternative account is pro posed in terms of the familiar psycholinguistic notion of 'learning complexity' which seems to offer a better account of the acquisition process.

Les Verbes De Mouvement Et Les Aspectuels En Italien

Among Italian verbs that co-occur with short and long clitic placement, we will analyse those traditionally called "aspectual" and "movement" verbs. However, our treatment of long clitic placement is firstly exemplified using modal verbs. This treatment is quite different from Rizzi's, because the verbs that trigger long clitic placement are considered to be auxiliairies. The verbs that are the main object of this article present some peculiarities not to be found in the case of modals, such as the preposition before the infinitive and the possible complement of a movement verb. Our treatment of the first of these two points is closely linked to the analysis of the verbal locution avere da~ infinitive which we will present in detail. Both this locution and the possible complement of movement verbs represent new data with respect of the syntax of long clitic placement. Some remarks on the idiosyncrasies of the verbs in question when occuring with long clitic placement precede a more detailed comparison of the restructuring hypothesis with the auxiliary one.

Reply to Morick on Intentionality

A number of philosophers have defended the view that mental or psychological verbs share a certain distinctive logical feature, though there is disagreement as to exactly what feature it is. Harold Morick has recently accused several of these philosophers (including Brentano, Chisholm and me) of having “ignored or misinterpreted” verbs of a certain kind, in their search for this characteristic trait of mental verbs (normally called “intentionality“).The verbs he is talking about are those that represent some of a person's activities, which are physical activities but which that person must allegedly be conscious in order to perform. Since a “basic sentence” containing such a verb typically entails the existence of its object's referent, Morick contends, the verb in question fails io count as “intentional” either on Brentano's definition, on Chisholm's, or on mine (each of these three definitions requires that a basic sentence containing an intentional verb not entail the existence of its object's putative referent.). Thus, Brentano, Chisholm and I have failed to make good our claim that all mental or psychological verbs are intentional.