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Block 20-24 July 10-13 and 14:30-16
The main topics of this seminar are suitable both for exams (e.g. Staatsexamen) as well as final theses with Prof. Gergel
Short description: There is notoriously no reliable semantic test to distinguish between lexical categories such as verbs, nouns and adjectives. For instance, both adjectives and verbs may refer to states (e.g., happy, sad, to love, to hate), and both verbs and nouns may refer to events (e.g., to arrive, to run, a trip, an event). In this class we will discuss a few generalizations that have been established in the linguistic literature concerning semantic verb classes and the underlying differences between them in relation to the semantics of the roots on which they are built. (The root is understood here as an abstract morpheme without a definite lexical category, on which verbs, nouns or adjectives are built as words. In English, its phonology is mostly identical to that of the corresponding words, but some words may involve the addition of overt suffixes: e.g., electr+ic). Furthermore, we will see how these distinctions carry over to the semantics of deverbal derived nominals (e.g., arrival, run, love, hate) with a focus on zero-derived nominals, which have no overt suffixes (see the climb-Ø vs. the climb-ing) and best reflect the properties of the root (e.g., Öclimb) underlying both the base verbs and the derived nouns. We will address the broad distinction between manner (sweep, run, wipe) and result verbs (clean, break, destroy), some challenging cases of manner + result verbs, as well as more specific studies on verbs of change of state (break, kill, boil, melt) and psychological verbs (love, hate, worry, upset). Among others, we aim to understand, for instance, why some transitive verbs optionally realize their object, while others must always realize it: see Terry swept (the floor) vs. Tracy broke *(the dishes). Theoretical discussion will be alternated with exercises in class, which will often involve searching for the different types of verbs in electronic corpora to verify the various theoretical tests offered in the literature.
Requirements: one short presentation of a topic from the reading list (topics will be announced well before the class begins); final term paper.
Contact: if you have any questions, please contact the lecturer at gianina@ifla.uni-stuttgart.de
Preliminary reading list:
Rappaport Hovav, Malka & Beth Levin. 1998. Building verb meanings. In M. Butt & W. Geuder, eds., The Projection of Arguments: Lexical and Compositional Factors, 97–133. Stanford, CA: CSLI Publications.
Rappaport Hovav, Malka & Beth Levin. 2010. Reflections on manner/result complementarity. In E. Doron, M. Rappaport Hovav, and I. Sichel, eds., Syntax, Lexical Semantics, and Event Structure, 21–38. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Beavers, John & Andrew Koontz-Garboden. To appear. The meaning of verbal roots and the roots of verbal meaning. Oxford: Oxford University Press. (Some sections from ch. 2 & 4)
Alexiadou, Artemis & Gianina Iordăchioaia. 2014. The psych causative alternation. Lingua 148: 53-79.
Additional references will be given in class, once the syllab |
