Verbal Semantics and Transitivity
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Trying to situate Chinese into the typology of labile verbs (verbs that may be used transitively or intransitively), this paper analyzes Chinese labile verbals under the framework of cognitive construction grammar. By exhaustively looking at labile verbals in a small corpus, it is found that as an isolating language in which causative (transitive use) or anticausative (intransitive use) is not morphologically marked, Chinese is particularly rich in labile verbals. After estimating how often several target verbals are used transitively and intransitively, two factors grounded in human cognition are revealed determining verbal lability in Chinese: change of state and spontaneity of the event. Change-of-state events give way to two competing profiling strategies, realized as a transitive construction and an intransitive construction, respectively. The degree and direction (transitive-dominated or intransitive-dominated) of verbal lability are sensitive to the likelihood of spontaneous occurrence of the event.
In this chapter, I analyze some cross-linguistic properties of labile verbs,
focusing in particular on the relationship between labile verbs and derivational
markers.
This paper investigates the source of systematic argument realization differences among two classes of manner verbs, hitting and wiping verbs. Its starting point is the hypothesis that argument realization patterns can largely be attributed to grammatical constraints on argument expression interacting with grammatically privileged properties of a verb's root. These properties include the root's ontological category and, as argued here, whether it encodes contact at a point or a region.
Cognitive Grammar is a radical alternative to the formalist theories that have dominated linguistic theory during the last half century. Instead of an objectivist semantics based on truth conditions or logical deduction, it adopts a conceptualist semantics based on human experience, our capacity to construe situations in alternate ways, and processes of imagination and mental construction. A conceptualist semantics makes possible an account of grammar which views it as being inherently meaningful (rather than an autonomous formal system). Grammar forms a continuum with lexicon, residing in assemblies of symbolic structures, i.e. pairings of conceptual structures and symbolizing phonological structures. Thus all grammatical elements are meaningful. It is shown in detail how Cognitive Grammar handles the major problems a theory of grammar has to deal with: grammatical classes, constructions, the relationship of grammar and lexicon, the capturing of regularities, and imposition of the proper restrictions. It is further shown how the framework applies to central domains of language structure: deixis, nominal structure, clausal structure, and complex sentences. Consideration is also given to discourse, the temporal dimension of grammar, and what it reveals about cognitive processes and the construction of our mental world.
This chapter outlines a view of Construction Grammar in which the mental grammar of speakers is shaped by the repeated exposure to specific utterances, and in which domain-general cognitive processes such as categorization and cross-modal association play a crucial role in the entrenchment of constructions. Under this view, all linguistic knowledge is viewed as emergent and constantly changing. The chapter emphasizes that the process of chunking along with categorization leads to the creation of constructions. It also provides semantic/pragmatic and phonetic arguments for exemplar representation and a discussion of the role of type and token frequency in determining the structure of the schematic slots in constructions, as well as the productivity of constructions.
The primary purpose of this study is to present evidence, based on experimental data from Western European languages, that there is orderly variation in the choice of perfective auxiliary with intransitive verbs. Specifically, auxiliary selection is sensitive to a hierarchy of aspectual/ thematic verb types: some verbs require a given auxiliary categorically, whereas others allow both auxiliaries to a greater or lesser extent depending on their position on the hierarchy. It is argued that this gradience has potentially important implications for the UNACCUSATIVE HYPOTHESIS, and more generally for theories of the lexicon-syntax interface.
Transitivity involves a number of components, only one of which is the presence of an object of the verb. These components are all concerned with the effectiveness with which an action takes place, e.g., the punctuality and telicity of the verb, the conscious activity of the agent, and the referentiality and degree of affectedness of the object. These components co-vary with one another in language after language, which suggests that Transitivity is a central property of language use. The grammatical and semantic prominence of Transitivity is shown to derive from its characteristic discourse function: high Transitivity is correlated with foregrounding, and low Transitivity with backgrounding.