Verbs and event structure

"This dissertation is about the elements that build verbs, the elements that introduce arguments, and how these elements interact to determine the interpretation of arguments and events. A theory of argument structure is a theory how arguments are introduced syntactically, interpreted semantically, and marked morphologically, and how this information is linked to predicates and their morphological shape. Through a detailed empirical study of Icelandic verbal alternations, this dissertation contributes to a line of research in which much of the work of argument structure is handled by the syntax, the component of language responsible for combining elements into larger structures, rather than a pre-syntactic lexicon.

The major theoretical contribution of this thesis is a syntactic theory of argument structure which is much more syntactically autonomous than its closest relatives. The system proposed shares with construction-based approaches to argument structure the assumption that structures generate meanings independent of the lexical roots embedded in them. That is, lexical roots play a secondary role in effecting argument structures. However, it differs from most syntactic approaches in that the syntax is far less deterministic of semantics, much as late insertion theories of morphology take syntax to underdetermine morphophonology.

In the present theory, syntactic structure may underdetermine interpretation in three ways. First, a functional head may be compatible with multiple ‘allosemes’, or denotations, which are decided post-syntactically on the basis of surrounding material. The categorial v head, for example, may have the interpretation of an activity or a cause (among other possible interpretations), depending on the interpretation of its complement. Second, a DP may be interpreted as an entity, or may be type-shifted to be interpreted as a (stative) eventuality. Third, a lexical root is associated with a web of possible semantic contributions, but the selection from among them is made on the basis of surrounding structure, after such structure has been built."

This master thesis aims to describe the behaviour of past participle agreement (PPA) in Majorcan Catalan, especially with a non-moved object (in its canonical post-verbal position), in comparison with other Romance dialects and emphasising a fact little or non observed until now, that is to say, PPA with a non-moved object is not always felicitous: it is accepted in telic dynamical events, but is forbidden in stative situations —except for certain telic dynamical constructions built with some stative verbs— and it is also forbidden in some atelic transitive dynamical constructions; but, crucially, not in all of them. In order to draw a theoretical explanation for this behaviour, it is argued that it is imperative that a specific functional head (Asp) be present in the clausal structure.

This paper offers a scalar analysis of Russian verbal forms derived with the prefix pro-. The proposed approach is crucially based on two notions integrated into the Generative Lexicon framework: 'Dynamic Event Structure', a representation of the internal makeup of events in terms of subevents or phases which allows tracking the change of the arguments’ properties over time; and 'change function', which accounts for the different ways in which these properties may be affected (i.e., initiated, terminated, modified or left unchanged) in the course of the event. Special emphasis is placed on the role of scalar properties of the nominal arguments in the composition of change-of-state predicates.

This paper examines the structural properties underlying the distribution and interpretation of two types of deverbal nouns in Spanish: miento nominals (e.g. hundimiento 'the sinking') and do/da nominals (e.g. secado 'the drying'); the first may combine with unaccusatives and verbs that enter the causative alternation, targeting the anticausative reading. By contrast, the latter type may select unergatives and the so-called incremental theme verbs, yielding a causative reading. Based on empirical evidence, I argue that the distributional and interpretive differences observed follow from the fact that these nominalizers are sensitive to different syntactic configurations in the event domain: building on Ramchand's decompositional analysis, I propose that the event structure of do/da nominals identifies a sequence [init i , proc i ], where subjects are interpreted as thematic Actors , and I show how this correlates with the absence of miento and the impossibility of reflexive readings (e.g. lavado 'the washing *of oneself /*by itself ').

The special properties that psych(ological) verbs manifest cross-linguistically have given rise to ongoing debates in syntactic and semantic theorizing. Regarding their lexical aspect classification, while verbal psych predicates with the Experiencer argument mapped onto the subject (SE psych predicates) have generally been analyzed as stative, there is little agreement on what kinds of eventualities object Experiencer (OE) psych predicates describe. On the stative reading, OE psych predicates have been classified as atelic causative states. On the (non-agentive) eventive reading, they have been widely analyzed as telic change of state predicates and classified as achievements or as accomplishments. Based on Polish, Rozwadowska (2003, 2012) argues that non-agentive eventive OE psych predicates in the perfective aspect denote an onset of a state and that they are atelic rather than telic. This paper offers further support for the view that Polish perfective psych verbs do not denote a change of state, i.e., a transition from α to ¬α. The evidence is drawn from verbal comparison and the distribution of the comparative degree quantifier jeszcze bardziej 'even more' in perfective psych predicates. It is argued here that in contexts including jeszcze bardziej 'even more', the perfective predication denotes an onset of a state whose degree of intensity exceeds the comparative standard. While a degree quantifier attached to the VP in the syntax contributes a differential measure function that returns a (vague) value representing the degree to which the intensity of the Experiencer's state exceeds the comparative standard in the event, it does not affect the event structure of the perfective verb and it does not provide the VP denotation it modifies with a final endpoint. As the perfective picks the onset of an upper open state, perfective psych predicates typically give rise to an atelic interpretation.

Previous studies carried out on sign languages have
researched classifier predicates, whereas this study is
researching whether the verb’s lexically portray an event
structure. This study aims to determine whether it is the parametrical speciality emerging because of the modality of signed languages that enable this to happen or that there is a need for an extended definition of the Ground component. Two-handed lexical verb signs have been observed and the structures of such motion events were examined within the framework of Tang & Yang (2007)’s model on sign languages. The study is limited to the two-handed lexical verb’s, which were chosen from within the most common 2000 words in The Contemporary Turkish Sign Language Dictionary (Makaroğlu & Dikyuva, 2017).

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