The Turkmen Verb System: Motion, Path, Manner and Figure

Advances in the theory of the lexicon, 2006

2014

Chomsky (1986b) employs a feature value approach in the specification of universal lexical categories ([+V, +N]). The verbal category is identified by [+V,-N] feature combination while the noun is specified by the features; [+N,-V]. The verb is a universal category with categorical features that are in direct opposition to the categorical features of the noun. The verb is therefore understood to be exclusively verbal; void of any nominal traits just as the noun is unambiguously nominal without any verbal traits. Interestingly, evidence from our data show that the feature specification of the Edo verb does not conform to Chomsky's universal categorical distinction. We show in this paper that the Edo verb is a complex component consisting of a combination of lexical units with categorial and semantic features that complement each other to represent a single semantic verbal element. These lexical units sometimes introduce features that contrast with the standard specification of verbal features, yet

2014

This chapter examines different issues connected with verb form systems, which are important also for the discussion of other verb categories (mood and voice). We will discuss the main principles of conjugation (without going into a more detailed discussion of conjugation groups), the category of tense (without going into the construction and use of tense forms), and the person category. There is no additional discussion of the Latvian system of participles here, as these are already discussed in the description of verb forms (for a discussion of Latvian participles, see, for example, Mathiassen 1997, 146-158). Like the noun, in terms of its grammatical features, the Latvian verb presents a typical Indo-European verb system with a wide variety of forms. The Latvian verb possesses the categories of person, tense, mood, and voice; in a sentence it usually takes the function of the predicate (see, for example,

ITALIAN JOURNAL OF LINGUISTICS, 2002

It has often been claimed that all languages have major, distinct classes of verbs and nouns (see eg Robins 1967: 211; Schachter 1985: 6-7; Whaley 1997: 59). There is, however, growing evidence to suggest that the verb-noun distinction is scalar rather than discrete (Ross ...

Empirical and Theoretical Investigations into Language …, 2003

Journal of Universal Language

This is a semantic study of causative movement verbs that have been organized into two main groups consisting of similar and contrasting features. This analysis contradicts Van Valin & LaPolla (1997) and other authors working within the Role and Reference Grammar theoretical framework such as Jolly (1991, 1993), who defends the view that causative movement verbs only respond to one Aktionsart type (that is, to one type of mode of action): causative accomplishment verbs. I demonstrate that there are also * This paper was funded through the research project ANGI2005/14 (CAR). I would like to acknowledge the merits of my colleague and friend Rubén Fernández Caro, "a man from the Middle Ages". He gave me the passion for medieval literature and languages and helped me discover the fascinating world found in Tolkien's stories and languages, and especially in Quenya. This paper could have never been written without such underlying motivation.

2017

In this thesis, I study the differences in form and interpretation presented by event-denoting nominalizations. Frequently, languages have more than one type of event nominalization, such as deverbal nouns derived by means of suffixes (Italian mutamento / mutazione, ‘change’, ‘mutation’, or English assignment, explosion) and their corresponding verbal nouns, e.g. infinitives (il mutare, ‘the changing’) or gerunds (exploding). These are usually perceived as alternatives, since their semantic difference is not clearly understood by neither native speakers nor linguists. The aim of this work is to understand the rationale that leads us to choose one form instead of the other and to define the linguistic features involved. The hypothesis underlying the whole thesis is that different forms are never true synonyms and, thus, present some differences in use, distribution or meaning. In a first study, I explore the role of the base verb in the nominalization selection. I investigate if the various nominalizations are formed from different types of base verbs and which characteristics define their domain of application. By means of statistical modeling, I highlight how the transitivity of the base verb partially determines which nominalization is preferred. Moreover, I show that NIs are not used to make up for the lack of a corresponding EDN, refuting previous claims. Then, I move forward analyzing the cases in which both forms are derived from the same base and I try to understand if they differ in meaning. In the second study presented, I use collocation analysis to observe their semantic dissimilarities. With focus on a single syntactic pattern, I find out that nominal infinitives and deverbal nouns inherit only part of the base verb senses. The former usually prefer metaphorical and abstract senses, whereas the latter select more concrete and literal ones. Lastly, I use distributional semantic models to observe quantitatively the semantic shift of the two processes. I confirm the hypothesis that nominal infinitives are more transparent and more semantically regular than deverbal nouns, given their inflectional nature. The studies presented have been conducted on Italian and German; however, the findings are relevant for the general treatment of nominalizations and may be replicated for further languages. Overall, my work shows how quantitative analyses of corpus data can help us investigate problems that are hardly addressed by linguists introspection. Moreover, it includes in the study of nominalizations nominal infinitives, non-finite verbal forms which, contrary to English gerunds, have not received the attention they deserve.

Advanced Education, 2018

The paper focuses on the contrastive analysis procedure from the bilateral perspective. This work is relevant due to current crosslinguistic approaches aimed at the comprehensive study of the notional words being the central ones with their ability to express a variety of categorical meanings. The verb is viewed as a central word in Ukrainian and English being of scholars' interest for a long time. Bilateral contrastive study is believed to be an effective tool for identifying similarities and differences within the subsystems of Ukrainian and English verbs. The authors present grounds for revealing a number of benefits of comparing language units from bilateral perspective. The two-way contrastive analysis is considered to be scientifically valid when using a reasonable tertium comparationis. The latter is viewed as an objective extra-lingual basis that has a specific realisation in each language. When studying verb's systems as complicated language items the choice of tertium comparationis turns next to a verb's category-process‖. The predominant advantage of this category is accounted for its universal, cross functional, broad-based nature. Comprising semantic and grammatical aspects, the category of-process‖ is believed to be a key point for building semantic and syntagmatic paradigms in the verb's system. The study concludes that the category of-process‖ is qualified as generalised construct (model) comprising lexical semantics of verbs, and a set of grammatical (morphological, derivational, syntactic) categories. The realisation of verbal processing is represented by the unique combinations of forms in each of the compared languages. The specificity of the verb's category of-process‖ in the compared languages reveals the hidden facts that are believed to enrich the theory of language with new generalisations.