The semantics of English -ment nominalizations

Synopsis: It is well-known that derivational affixes can be highly polysemous, producing a range of different, often related, meanings. For example, English deverbal nouns with the suffix -er can denote instruments (opener), agents (writer), locations (diner), or patients (loaner). It is commonly assumed that this polysemy arises through a compositional process in which the affix interacts with the semantics of the base. Yet, despite intensive research in recent years, a workable model for this interaction is still under debate. In order to study and model the semantic contributions of the base and of the affix, a framework is needed in which meanings can be composed and decomposed. In this book, I formalize the semantic input and output of derivation by means of frames, that is, recursive attribute-value structures that serve to model mental representations of concepts. In my approach, the input frame offers an array of semantic elements from which an affix may select to construct the derivative's meaning. The relationship between base and derivative is made explicit by integrating their respective frame-semantic representations into lexical rules and inheritance hierarchies. I apply this approach to a qualitative corpus study of the productive relationship between the English nominalizing suffix -ment and a semantically delimited set of verbal bases. My data set consists of 40 neologisms with base verbs from two semantic classes, namely change-of-state verbs and verbs of psychological state. I analyze 369 attestations which were elicited from various corpora with a purposeful sampling approach, and which were hand-coded using common semantic categories such as event, state, patient and stimulus. My results show that -ment can target a systematically restricted set of elements in the frame of a given base verb. It thereby produces a range of possible readings in each derivative, which becomes ultimately interpretable only within a specific context. The derivational process is governed by an interaction of the semantic elements provided by the base on the one hand, with properties of the affix (e.g. -ment's aversion to [+animate] readings) on the other. For instance, a shift from the verb annoy to a result-state reading in annoyment is possible because the input frame of verbs of psychological state offers a RESULT-STATE attribute, which, as is fixed in the inheritance hierarchy, is compatible with -ment. Meanwhile, a shift from annoy to an experiencer reading in annoyment fails because the value range of the attribute EXPERIENER is fixed to [+animate] entities, so that -ment's animacy constraint blocks the inheritance mechanism. Furthermore, a quantitative exploration of my data set reveals a likely blocking effect for some -ment readings. Thus, while I have found most expected combinations of nominalization and reading attested, there are pronounced gaps for readings like instrument or stimulus. Such readings are likely to be produced by standardly subject-denoting suffixes such as -er or -ant, which may reduce the probability for -ment derivation. The quantitative analysis furthermore shows that, within the subset of attested combinations, ambiguity is widespread, with 43% of all combinations of nominalization and reading being only attested ambiguously. This book shows how a derivational process acts on the semantics of a given verbal base by reporting on an in-depth qualitative study of the semantic contributions of both the base and the affix. Furthermore, it demonstrates that an explicit semantic decomposition of the base is essential for the analysis of the resulting derivative's semantics

A comparative psychomecanical study of arabic and english causative verbs

Cette thèse examine les alternances transitives en arabe et en anglais d'un point de vue sémantique. La différence entre l'anglais et l'arabe en ce qui concerne les alternances transitives manifeste la pauvreté de la morphologie anglaise par rapport à la richesse de l'arabe dans ce domaine d'usage. En fait, la même forme du verbe est utilisée en anglais à la fois comme transitive et intransitive. L'existence de plusieurs formes morphologiques du verbe arabe est due à la possibilité d'exprimer la causalité même avec des verbes inergatifs. Le cadre théorique utilisé dans la thèse est inspiré de la grammaire cognitive et de la psychomécanique du langage. Les deux approches soutiennent que le sens est dans l'esprit plutôt que dans le monde référentiel ou dans des constructions théoriques de modèle encadrées en termes d'ensembles de référents ou d'ensembles de mondes possibles dans lesquels une phrase serait considérée comme vraie. La psychomécanique fait en outre une distinction cruciale entre les deux états dans lesquels le sens existe dans l'esprit: sous la forme sous laquelle il existe avant d'être utilisé, il s'agit d'un potentiel décontextualisé en position de cause possible de la gamme variée de messages qu'il peut être observé pour exprimer dans ses divers usages dans le discours; dans l'état dans lequel il existe lorsqu'il est utilisé, il s'agit d'un réel contextualisé en position d'effet, déployé avec un contenu contextuel et situationnel pour véhiculer un message particulier parmi tous les messages qu'il est capable de contribuer à exprimer. Cette étude est également fermement basée sur le principe sémiologique proposé par Duffley (2014), à savoir que « le langage humain n'est pas principalement fondé sur la forme, mais sur les appariements forme-sens ». La plupart des recherches précédentes sur la causalité ont été exclusivement syntaxiques, la sémantique n'étant impliquée que dans la classification des lexèmes verbaux en groupes partageant des éléments sémantiques de signification basés sur un comportement syntaxique similaire. Notre étude propose un sens potentiel capable d'expliquer l'ensemble de leurs usages pour l'ensemble des six dispositifs identifiés dans la littérature comme causativants ou dé-causativants en arabe, à savoir ablaut, gémination, préfixation par a-, ta + gémination, préfixation avec ta- + allongement de la voyelle du milieu, et préfixation avec n-. L'étude des trois premières formes a montré que la causalité n'est pas la signification potentielle de ces formes, mais plutôt un seul type de message parmi de nombreuses autres significations réelles véhiculées lorsqu'elles sont utilisées en contexte. Notre analyse a également conclu que les trois dernières formes de la liste ne sont pas non plus intrinsèquement décausativantes, mais que les significations potentielles de ces formes impliquent la réflexion et la réciprocité, des notions qui s'opposent à la nature de la causalité qui est orientée vers l'extérieur, car l'action comme restant interne à l'auteur de l'action ou comme retournant réciproquement à celui-ci.This thesis examines the transitive alternations in Arabic and English from a semantic point of view. The difference between English and Arabic with regard to transitive alternations manifests the poverty of English morphology compared to the richness of Arabic in this area of usage. In fact, the same form of the verb is used in English as both transitive and intransitive. The existence of several morphological forms of the Arabic verb is due to the possibility of expressing causation even with unergative stems. The theoretical framework employed in the thesis is inspired by Cognitive Grammar and the Psychomechanics of Language. Both approaches hold that meaning is in the mind rather than in the referential world or in model-theoretical constructs framed in terms of sets of referents or sets of possible worlds in which a sentence would be considered true. Psychomechanics further makes a crucial distinction between the two states in which meaning exists in the mind: in the form in which it exists before being used, it is a decontextualized potential in the position of possible cause of the variegated range of messages it can be observed to express in its various uses in discourse; in the state in which it exists when used, it is a contextualized actual in the position of effect, being deployed along with contextual and situational content to convey a particular message from among all the messages it is capable of contributing to express. This study is also firmly based on the semiological principle proposed by Duffley (2014), namely that "human language is not primarily about form, but about form-meaning pairings". Most of the previous research on causation has been exclusively syntactic, with semantics being involved only in the classification of verbal lexemes into groups that share semantic elements of meaning based on similar syntactic behavior. Our study proposes a potential meaning capable of explaining all of their uses for all of the six devices identified in the literature as causativizing or de-causativizing in Arabic, namely ablaut, gemination, prefixation by a-, ta + gemination, prefixation with ta- + lengthening of the middle vowel, and prefixation with n-. The study of the first three devices showed that causativization is not the potential meaning of these forms, but rather only one type of message among many other actual meanings conveyed when they are used in context. Our analysis also concluded that the last three forms in the list are not inherently de-causativizing either, but that the potential meanings of these forms involve reflexivization and reciprocity, notions which are opposed to the externally-oriented nature of causation, as they construe the action as remaining internal to the causer or as returning reciprocally upon the latter

"Cause" and affect : evaluative and emotive parameters of meaning among the periphrastic causative verb in English

This dissertation investigates the so-called periphrastic causative verbs in English – verbs such as cause, make, have, force, and let – and distinguishes them with respect to their selectional behavior and inferential properties. I suggest that these verbs are primarily differentiated in terms of the evaluative and affective dispositions of participants in the speech act and the caused eventuality. The empirical basis for this claim incorporates corpora as well as experimental elicitation and judgment tasks. Based on these findings, it is proposed that the selection of periphrastic causative verb in the expression of a directive causative event is governed by the evaluative stance of the patient of the causative verb. I argue that the English verb cause in particular is less general than has previously been assumed, that it has at least two different senses, and that its primary sense is restricted to cases of negative speaker sentiment.Linguistic

Voice at the Interfaces:The syntax, semantics and morphology of the Hebrew verb

This books presents the most comprehensive description and analysis to date of Hebrew morphology, with an emphasis on the verbal templates. Its aim is to develop a theory of argument structure alternations which is anchored in the syntax but has systematic interfaces with the phonology and the semantics. Concretely, the monograph argues for a specific formal system centered around possible values of the head Voice. The formal assumptions are as similar as possible to those made in work on non-Semitic languages. The first part of the book (four chapters) is devoted to Hebrew; the second part (two chapters) compares the current theory with other approaches to Voice and argument structure in the recent literature

the syntax, semantics, and morphology of the Hebrew verb

Synopsis: This books presents the most comprehensive description and analysis to date of Hebrew morphology, with an emphasis on the verbal templates. Its aim is to develop a theory of argument structure alternations which is anchored in the syntax but has systematic interfaces with the phonology and the semantics. Concretely, the monograph argues for a specific formal system centered around possible values of the head Voice. The formal assumptions are as similar as possible to those made in work on non-Semitic languages. The first part of the book (four chapters) is devoted to Hebrew; the second part (two chapters) compares the current theory with other approaches to Voice and argument structure in the recent literature

Voice at the interfaces

This books presents the most comprehensive description and analysis to date of Hebrew morphology, with an emphasis on the verbal templates. Its aim is to develop a theory of argument structure alternations which is anchored in the syntax but has systematic interfaces with the phonology and the semantics. Concretely, the monograph argues for a specific formal system centered around possible values of the head Voice. The formal assumptions are as similar as possible to those made in work on non-Semitic languages. The first part of the book (four chapters) is devoted to Hebrew; the second part (two chapters) compares the current theory with other approaches to Voice and argument structure in the recent literature

Automatic discovery of complex causality

This study entails the understanding of and the development of a computational method for automatically extracting complex expressions in language that correspond to event to event sequential relations in the real world. We here develop component procedures of a system that would be capable of taking raw linguistic input (such as those from narrative writings or social network data), and find real-world semantic relations among events. Such an endeavor is applicable to many types of sequential relations, for which we use causality as a case study, both for its importance as a prominent type of sequential relation between events, as well as for its general prevalence in natural language. But we also demonstrate that the idea is also applicable in principle to other major types of event to event relations, such as reciprocity. The study primarily focuses on those types of causalities that contain complex structures and require in-depth linguistic analyses to discover and extract. Designing an automated method for the extraction of structurally complex causal expressions entails methodologies and theories that are beyond conventional methods used in computational semantics. The classes of adjunctive causal structure, and embedded causal structure are types that are hard to access using traditional methods, but more amenable for methods developed in this study. The principal procedures employed for the extraction of these are a heavily mod- ified form of Hidden Markov Model (HMM), which we use to deal with causal structures that have sequentially complex makeup. We also designed a highly modified Genetic Algo- rithm (GA) adapted for embedded context-free structures, used to rank and extract those causal structures that have deep embedding at the syntax-semantics interface. These will be reformulated, augmented, and explored in depth. With these methods using unsupervised and semi-supervised learning, we were able to obtain reasonable results in terms of discrimination of causal pairs ⟨ei,ej⟩ pairs and some longer chains of causation from corpora. From these results, we were also able to perform additional linguistic analysis over their theoretical semantic structure, and observe aspects of each that allows us to sub-classify the relations according to standard ideas in formal logic as well as from behavioral psychology. These methods would be critical to a system for building a graph theoretic representation of a social network, from corpora produced by entities within that network, which would utilize the methods described in this project, and similar approaches can be extended to model and discover other types of complex event- relations. These types of fundamental technologies, would in turn, help us to design and build the types of on-line and mobile services that provide increased machine awareness of user behavior and to be able to target and cater to users individually

Lability of Verbs and the Change-of-State Construction in Chinese.

Ph.D. Thesis. University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa 2017