Search

This article deals with the syntax and semantics of Old English End verbs on the basis of the framework of verb classes and alternations and the theory of Role and Reference Grammar. The analysis focuses on class membership and includes meaning components and argument realisation--linking in simplex and complex constructions and alternations. The inventory of verbs under analysis comprises ablinnan, ætstandan, blinnan, for(e)sacan, geblinnan, linnan, ofersittan, oflinnan, oðstillan and (ge)trucian. The main conclusion is that the morphologically related verbs ablinnan and blinnan are the strongest candidates for End verbs, given the syntactic constructions and morphosyntactic alternations in which they are found. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the effect of the high frequency of occurrence of a verb in a syntactic frame on speakers' selection of that syntactic frame for other verbs. We hypothesize that the frequent co-occurrence of a syntactic frame and a particular verb (what we call an anchor verb) leads to a strong association between the verb and the frame analogous to the relationship between a category and its best exemplar. Our Verb Anchor Hypothesis claims that verbs that are more semantically similar to the anchor are more likely to occur in that syntactic frame than verbs that are less semantically similar to the anchor. We tested the Verb Anchor Hypothesis on the dative alternation which involves the meaning-preserving ditransitive and prepositional frames. A corpus study determined that give was the anchor verb for the ditransitive frame. We then examined whether high semantic similarity to give increases the likelihood of an alternating verb (e.g. to hand) occurring in the ditransitive frame (Mary handed the boy a book) rather than in the prepositional frame (Mary handed a book to the boy). The results of several logistic regression analyses show that semantic similarity to give makes a unique contribution to predicting the choice of the ditransitive frame aside from other factors known to affect syntactic frame selection. Additional analyses suggest that the Verb Anchor Hypothesis might also hold for more narrowly-defined subclasses of alternating verbs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates whether a lexical variance caused by verbs influences the choice and frequency of instrument with-PPs. The corpus data shows that observations grouped by verb class demonstrate systematically different behaviors and this individual variance of verb classes can be captured by means of a random effect of a mixed-effects model. Building up on Choi's (2012) research that identifies the syntactic, semantic, and morphological factors that influence the presence of instrument with-PPs as fixed effects, the current study classifies the instrument-taking verbs into verb classes, based on Levin's (1993) study, and builds a mixed-effects model taking verb class as a random variable. The new statistical technique of hierarchical, multi-level, mixed-effects modeling (Baayen 2008; Bresnan et al. 2007; Gelman and Hill 2007; Johnson 2008; Kuperman 2009; Pinheiro and Bates 2000) can process across-word fixed effects and by-word random effects together. By taking into consideration the subtle syntactic and semantic characteristics of verbs, this new modeling analysis provides a way to incorporate native speakers' lexical knowledge into grammar. ( [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Moenia: Revista Lucense de Lingüística & Literatura is the property of Universidad de Santiago de Compostela, Servicio de Publicaciones and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The marking of arguments is semantically oriented in Georgian. The basic concept of the argument marking is the activity hierarchy of the arguments. The opposition active/inactive underlies the distinction of the two patterns of Georgian person markers and governs all specific rules of the distribution of their allomorphs. Syntactic function plays almost no role in the morphological marking of arguments. Three TAM Series of Georgian verb system distinguish different types of argument marking. The problem of the diachronic relationship between the constructions of different Series is discussed in the paper from the viewpoint of the theory of markedness and the hierarchy of the parts of the clause. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Standard Dutch and German have two reflexive forms: a weak form ( zich in Dutch and sich in German) and a strong form ( zichzelf in Dutch and sich selbst in German). The choice between the two reflexive forms in Dutch has been explained by the selectional restrictions of the verb, distinguishing between three verb classes: inherently reflexive verbs, accidentally reflexive verbs and transitive verbs. The same three verb classes can be distinguished in German, suggesting that the factors governing reflexive choice in Dutch and German are similar. However, several studies have pointed out that Dutch zich is more restricted in its use than German sich. We used a forced-choice task to test adult Dutch and German participants on their preference for the weak versus strong reflexive form with various verb classes and sentence types. Comparing similar sentences across the two languages, we observe an overall preference for the strong reflexive in Dutch but an overall preference for the weak reflexive in German. Looking at the participants' reflexive choices within each language, we found effects of verb class, syntactic structure (transitive versus ECM constructions) and semantic features. Whereas the semantic feature habituality did not affect reflexive choice in either language, intentionality did so in Dutch only, and tense and possibly focus affected reflexive choice in both languages. These observations seem problematic for the syntactically motivated dual-entry account of reflexive choice, but are consistent with the likelihood account. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]