Abui Tripartite Verbs: Exploring the limits of compositionality.

2008. In S. Morey and M. Post, Eds., North East Indian Linguistics. New Delhi, Cambridge University Press India: 127-152.

Advances in the theory of the lexicon, 2006

Language, 2004

Lingua, 2005

In this paper we analyse the interdependence of Persian nonverbal (NV) elements and the light verb (LV) in determining the syntactic properties, the event structure, and the alternation possibilities of the entire complex predicate (CP). We argue that these properties provide strong evidence for a constructionalist approach to such phenomena, like that of Keyser (1993, 2002), and that the combination of compositionality and syntactic independence effects observed in these constructions, are difficult, if not impossible, to deal with in a projectionist approach. # structure of its heavy counterpart. Furthermore, although the LV determines the agentivity (xordan 'collide' versus zadan 'hit') and the eventiveness of the CPr, it fails to completely determine its event structure and telicity. Thus, depending on the NV element, the same LV may occur in different types of event structure. For example, the LV xordan 'collide' may occur in both accomplishment and achievement complex predicates, while the LV zadan 'hit' can occur in activity, accomplishment, and semelfactive complex predicates, when combined with different NV elements. We argue that when the LV allows for event type variation (as in the case of xordan 'collide'), it is the category of the NV element that determines the event structure of the whole CPr. That is, if the NV element is a noun, the CPr is atelic (activity or semelfactive), unless the noun is itself eventive (see Section 5), in which case the CPr may be telic (accomplishment)). If the NV element is an adjective, an adverbial particle, or a prepositional phrase, the CPr is telic (accomplishment or achievement). This is summarized in (1):

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

IULC Working Papers Online, 2004

Isogloss. Open Journal of Romance Linguistics, 2022

We explore the properties of the Catalan verbalizing suffix-ej(ar), centering on intransitive verbs. After presenting the rich variety of outputs that this suffix allows, we focus on two generalizations. The first one has to do with the consistent eventive nature of verbs derived with this suffix, even from bases that count as individual-level predicates, like colour adjectives or proper names. Importantly, their eventivity is orthogonal to their dynamic/non-dynamic status. The second one is the robust unergative status of intransitive-ej(ar) vebs. We show that previous work on-ej(ar) has failed to capture these two properties. Adopting a Ramchandian, nanosyntactic perspective, we propose that this suffix is the spellout of the subeventive structure of a caused process, i.e., the heads Init and Proc. The (non-)dynamic interpretation of the verbs is claimed to emerge from interactions among the contents of the roots involved in the predicate, at the Isogloss 2022, 8(4)/12 Victor Acedo-Matellán & Elisabeth Gibert-Sotelo 2 conceptual, non-grammatical level. We finally extend the proposed analysis to account for the behaviour of transitive-ej(ar) verbs.

2019