Lexical verb

Abstract: Verbs can be introduced (merged) in either a lexical VP or a functional head, the latter position giving rise to restructuring contexts. We argue that there are two clitic positions in Italian “restructured” clauses: one associated with the (restructured) lexical verb and the other a clausal clitic position located in the functional domain. While restructuring can be recursive, clitics appear either on the restructured infinitive (no clitic climbing) or in the functional domain of the highest verb (full clitic climbing). There is no clitic climbing to an intermediate restructuring verb. We argue that only the lowest restructured verb makes a position for clitics available and that this position is the same as that of infinitive-final [e]. Finally, we show that the functional ∼ lexical dichotomy is too sharp and that a variety of verb classes must be admitted, whose properties correlate with the point in the structure in which they are merged.

Abstract: Borrowing, or diffusion, of grammatical categories in language contact is not a unitary process. In the linguistic area of the Vaupe´s in northwest Amazonia, several different mechanisms help create new contact-induced morphology. Languages which are in continuous contact belong to the genetically unrelated East-Tucanoan and Arawak families. There is a strong cultural inhibition against borrowing forms of any sort (grammatical or lexical). Language contact in the multilingual Vaupe´s linguistic area has resulted in the development of similar – though far from identical – grammatical structures. In Tariana, an Arawak language spoken in the area, reanalysis and reinterpretation of existing categories takes place when diffusion involves restructuring a pre-existing category for which there is a slot in the structure, such as case. A new grammatical category with no pre-existing slots may evolve via grammaticalization of a free morpheme – this is how aspect and aktionsart marking was developed. The development of a five-term tense-evidentiality paradigm involves a combination of strategies : reanalysis with reinterpretation accounts for the obligatory tense marking,and the history of visual, inferred and reported evidentials. The nonvisual evidential evolved via grammaticalization of a lexical verb while the most recent, assumed, evidential involves reanalysis and reinterpretation of an aspect marker and grammatical accommodation.

Abstract: Introduction Carol Tenny and James Pustejovsky Part I. Foundational Issues in Event Semantics: 1. What lexical semantics reveals about the nature of events Beth Levin 2. Events, predication, and Qualia structure James Pustejovsky Part II. Grammatical Components of Complex Events: 3. The Quantization puzzle Hana Filip 4. Events and thematic role assignments to affected objects Gregory Carlson Part III. Event Structure and the Syntax and Semantics of Adverbs: 5. Some effects of manner adverbials on meaning June M. Wickboldt 6. Manners and events Tom Ernst 7. Core events and adverbial modification Carol Tenny Part IV. Event Structure and Morphosyntax: 8. Event structure in syntax Lisa Travis 9. Verb Frame alternations in Dutch and their acquisition Angeliek Van Hout 10. Ergativity and event structure Elizabeth Ritter and Sara Rosen 11. On lexical verb meanings: evidence from Salish Henry Davis and Hamida Demirdache Part V. Grammaticalization of Events and Non-Events: 12. On the internal structure of stative psychological causatives in Finnish Liina Pylkkanen 13. Anti neo-Davidsonianism Graham Katz Part VI. Thoughts: 14. Where we are in the study of events in natural language Barbara Partee.

Abstract: I discuss the semantics and syntax of a phenomenon often called lexical subordination and here called conflation, in which a VP with a single verb expresses both an activity and a result predication, although only the former is licensed by the verb's permanent lexical entry. Alongside standard cases such as resultatives and particle verbs, I discuss what I call event-path structures in English and German. In these, an activity is argued to conflate with a predication expressing a (sometimes metaphoric) path of the activity. These little-known data challenge many argument-structure theories because the path expressions sometimes disallow the linking of the verb's normal object. They require a theory where the lexical verb does not contribute arguments in conflation structures, a conclusion motivated empirically. I present a theory of syntax-semantics mapping which relies on VP shells with meaningful light verbs which constrain the interpretations of their specifiers and complements. Conflation is treated as compounding of a verb root to one of the light verbs. This accounts simply for the argument-structural patterns of resultatives and event-path structures. None of the argumentation appeals to operations at a lexical-semantic level between conceptual structure and syntax.