Agent entailments in the semantics of roots

Many recent theories of event structure (e.g. Hale and Keyser 2002; Borer 2005; Ramchand 2008; Alexiadou et al. 2015) assume that verb meanings decompose into event templates (e.g. vBECOME, vDO) and roots (e.g. √KILL,√DIE). Crucially, under such theories, templatic meanings related to change or intentionality are never introduced by roots, but only by event templates (i.e. vBECOME, vDO respectively), as roots are assumed to provide real-world details about the event. In the present paper I argue, following Beavers and Koontz-Garboden (to appear), that there are certain classes of roots that inherently comprise as part of their entailments the meanings that some theoretical approaches assume to be part of templatic meanings introduced in the syntax by projections such as vDO (Folli and Harley 2005, 2007). More specifically, I make use of sublexical modification with again in order to show that templatic meanings related to intentionality cannot be severed from √MURDER-type roots (i.e. √MURDER,√SLAY,√ASSASSINATE,√SLAUGHTER,√MASSACRE), i.e. that entailments of intentionality are introduced by √MURDER-type roots

Resultatives and low depictives in English

We argue against a purely semantic account of the Unique Path Constraint (Goldberg, Adele. 1991. It can’t go down the chimney up: Paths and the English resultative. In Proceedings of the seventeenth annual meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society, 368–378.), i.e., the constraint that there can only be one result state in a single clause, and in favor of a syntactic restriction regarding event structure. We propose, following Mateu, Jaume & Víctor Acedo-Matellán. 2012. The manner/result complementarity revisited: A syntactic approach. In M. Cristina Cuervo & Yves Roberge (eds.), The end of argument structure? Syntax and semantics, 209–228. New York: Academic Press, that structurally there can only be one result predicate per clause since the little v head selects for one result predicate as its complement. In order to make our claim, we provide novel data that violate the Unique Path Constraint defined as a semantic constraint. Further, we analyze examples that at first blush pose a problem for the present account as they appear to involve two result phrases, e.g., shot him dead off the horse. We argue, however, that the second result phrase is not syntactically a result, but rather constitutes a case of what Acedo-Matellán, Víctor, Josep Ausensi, Josep Maria Fontana & Cristina Real-Puigdollers. forthcoming. Old Spanish resultatives as low depictives. In Chad L. Howe, Timothy Gupton, Margaret Renwick & Pilar Chamorro (eds.), Open romance linguistics 1. Selected papers from the 49th linguistic symposium on romance languages. Berlin: Language Science Press have called low depictives, which join the syntactic derivation through a low applicative head.The first author acknowledges financial support from the project Connecting Conceptual and Referential Models of Meaning 2 (CONNECT 2) (PI: Louise McNally) from the Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad (FFI2016-76045-P;AEI/MINEICO/FEDER, UE) and from an ICREA Academia award to Louise McNally. The second author acknowledges financial support from a Formación de Personal Investigador (FPI) grant from the Spanish Agencia Estatal de Investigación (Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades) and the European Social Fund, within the project Redes de variación microparametricas en las lenguas románicas (PIs: Ángel Gallego and Jaume Mateu) from the Spanish Ministerio de Economía, Industria y Competitividad (FFI2017-87140-C4-1-P)

Semantics and Morphosyntactic Variation: Qualities and the Grammar of Property Concepts. Itamar Francez and Andrew Koontz-Garboden. Oxford Studies in Theoretical Linguistics, Oxford University Press

Obra ressenyada: Itamar FRANCEZ and Andrew KOONTZ-GARBODEN, Semantics and Morphosyntactic Variation: Qualities and the Grammar of Property Concepts. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017

Hybrid subjects in Spanish and Catalan: Halfway between agents and patients

We analyze an intransitive construction involving verbs like Spanish matarse ‘kill’ whose subjects appear to have both internal and external argument properties. Examples include Juan se mató en un accidente de coche ‘Juan got himself killed in a car accident’, in which the subject’s referent shows hybrid behavior between agent and patient as it needs to be engaged in an action leading to its accidental death. We propose that the subject’s internal and external argument properties can be accounted for if subjects can bear two semantic roles by virtue of being associated with more than one distinct head in the syntax (Pineda & Berro 2020). We argue that such intransitive uses involve a distinct argument structure from transitive reflexives despite sharing the same surface form, cf., El sospechoso del homicidio se mató al estar rodeado por la policía ‘The suspect killed himself when he was surrounded by the police’. The present account provides evidence that agents and external arguments do not always correlate since some verb classes can have identical surface form, despite involving underlyingly distinct argument alignment.Ausensi was supported by the project PID2022-136610NB-I00 (MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033/FEDER, UE). Bigolin was supported by the grant FPI PRE2018-085396 (AEI/European Social Fund), and projects PID2021-123617NB-C41 (Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación) and 2021SGR00787 (AGAUR-Generalitat de Catalunya)

States and changes-of-state in the semantics of result roots

A major challenge for event structural theories that decompose verbs into event templates and roots relates to the syntactic distribution of roots and what types of event structures roots can be integrated into. ONTOLOGICAL APPROACHES propose roots fall into semantic classes, such as manner versus result, which determine root distribution (Rappaport Hovav and Levin 1998, 2010). FREE DISTRIBUTION APPROACHES, in contrast, hold that root distribution is not constrained by semantic content and roots are free to integrate into various types of event structures (Borer 2005; Acedo-Matellán and Mateu 2014). We focus on two different classes of verbs classified as result verbs in Rappaport Hovav and Levin’s (1998, 2010) sense and their ability to appear in resultative constructions. We build on Beavers and Koontz-Garboden’s (2012, 2020) proposal that the roots underlying these verbs fall into two classes: property concept roots, which denote relations between individuals and states, and change-of-state roots, which on our proposal, denote relations between individuals and events of change. We show that change-of-state roots, but not property concept roots, are able to appear in the modifier position of resultative constructions by providing naturally occurring examples of such resultatives. Combining the proposed lexical semantics of these two classes of roots with a reformulation of an ONTOLOGICAL APPROACH solely dependent on a root’s semantic type, we show that this analysis makes novel and accurate predictions about the possibility of the two classes of roots appearing in resultative constructions and the range of interpretations available when change-of-state roots are integrated into resultative event structure templates.This work received support from various sources: Yu was partially supported by the KU Leuven-funded C1-project Comparatives Under the Microscope (C14/20/041) awarded to Jeroen van Craenenbroeck, Guido Vanden Wyngaerd, and Dany Jaspers, Ausensi was supported by grant FFI2016-76045-P (AEI/MINEICO/FEDER, UE), an ICREA Academia awarded to Louise McNally, ROLLING 2017-SGR-165, Pla de Foment de la Recerca 2022PFR-URV-1, and the fellowship Juan de la Cierva-Formación FJC2021-046652-I (MCIN/AEI 10.13039/501100011033 and NextGenerationEU/PRTR), and Smith was partially supported by ERC-2017-COG769192 awarded to Andrew Koontz-Garboden

The Contribution of roots: the division of labor between grammar and the lexicon in meaning composition

This dissertation explores the division of labor between grammar and the lexicon from the viewpoint of event structural theories which take verb meanings to decompose into event templates and roots. Event templates define the temporal and causal structure of the event, while roots fill in real-world details. On this view, the semantics of the whole syntactic structure and the grammatical properties of the verbs are solely determined by the event templates, and never by roots. In this dissertation, I argue against this strong division of labor by showing that roots play a bigger role in grammar and meaning composition. I argue in favor of an event structural theory of verb meaning in which the contributions of event templates and roots are not mutually exclusive, but complement each other with grammatical consequences. Namely, root-specific entailments are shown to be grammatically relevant insofar as they restrict the syntactic structure and in turn determine the grammatical properties of verbs. I argue thus in favor of an event structural approach which needs to be sensitive to the semantic contribution of roots insofar as roots impose restrictions on their syntactic contexts.Aquesta tesi explora la divisió del treball entre la gramàtica i el lexicó des del punt de vista de les teories d’estructura eventiva en què els significat dels verbs es decomposa en patrons d’estructura eventiva i arrels. Els patrons defineixen l’estructural temporal i causal de l’esdeveniment mentre que les arrels proporcionen informació del món. Segons aquesta visió, la semàntica de tota l’estructura sintàctica i les propietats gramaticals dels verbs estan exclusivament determinades pels patrons i mai per les arrels. En aquesta tesi, argumento en contra d’aquesta forta divisió del treball mostrant que les arrels juguen un paper més important en la composició del significat i la gramàtica. Argumento a favor d’una teoria d’estructura eventiva on les contribucions dels patrons i les arrels no són mútuament exclusives, però es complementen amb conseqüències gramaticals. En concret, es demostra que les conseqüències lògiques de les arrels són gramaticalment rellevants ja que restringeixen l’estructura sintàctica i determinen les propietats gramaticals dels verbs. Argumento així a favor d’un enfocament de l’estructura eventiva que ha de ser sensible a la contribució semàntica de les arrels ja que les arrels imposen restriccions als contextos sintàctics on apareixen

Unaccusativity and the Way-Construction in English

The English way-construction (e.g., John kicked his way into the concert) has been taken as a diagnostic to tell unaccusative and unergative verbs apart since, allegedly, only unergative verbs permit it (Marantz 1992; Levin 1993; Levin and Rappaport Hovav 1995). However, as Kuno and Takami (2004) point out, there are some unaccusative verbs (e.g. roll) which can appear in this construction. In the present paper, I argue that more than whether a verb is unaccusative or not, the way-construction is sensitive to whether the verb used in this construction encodes a scalar change (in the sense of Rappaport Hovav and Levin 2010) affecting the entity denoted by the subject. This sensitivity is due to the fact that this construction already entails that the subject referent undergoes a scalar change (e.g. John kicked his way into the concert, #but didn’t get in) and, therefore, with the additional denotation of a scalar change by the verb, we would have an interpretation where the same entity is undergoing two simultaneous scalar changes, which has been argued to not be grammatically possible (i.e. the Unique Path Constraint by Goldberg 1991; Tenny 1994; Tortora 1998; Matsumoto 2006). I argue that most unaccusative verbs (e.g. arrive, die, bloom) are incompatible with the way-construction not by virtue of being unaccusative, but due to encoding scalar changes predicated of their subject referent; this is borne out by the fact that unaccusative verbs that do not encode scalar changes predicated of their subject referent (e.g. spin) are indeed found in the way-construction. In addition, I also review some counterexamples to the Unique Path Constraint, e.g. John broke the eggs into the bowl, and argue that these are not actual counterexamples if the Unique Path Constraint is reformulated more specifically into what I call the One Scalar Change per Entity Constraint that establishes that there can be more than one distinct scalar change per clause as long as the scalar changes are not predicated of the same entity.This research was supported by the grant FFI2016-76045-P (AEI/MINEICO/FEDER, UE) and by an ICREA Academia award to Louise McNally

Resultatives and the architecture of event structure

Non UBCUnreviewedGraduat

Review of Semantics and Morphosyntactic Variation: Qualities and the Grammar of Property Concepts by Itamar Francez and Andrew Koontz-Garboden

Review of Semantics and Morphosyntactic Variation: Qualities and the Grammar of Property Concepts by Itamar Francez and Andrew Koontz-Garbode