Complex types in the (morphologically) complex lexicon

Abstract

This paper deals with the event/result meaning contrast displayed by most deverbal Action Nominals (AN). We claim that this intriguing pattern of inherent polysemy is peculiar when compared with standard cases of dot objects because the result sense is temporally and cau-sally depended on the event sense. We attempt a formal modelling of the lexical representa-tion of nominals derived from creation and re-description verbs (e.g. construction, transla-tion) based on this insight, inclusive of Event Structure and Qualia Structure representations significantly different from the proposal in Pustejovsky (1995). Finally, we argue that troubles with co-predication are the direct in-dication of the internal asymmetry between the types that make up the complex, and can be explained in relation to different syntactic and semantic requirements of the event and result types

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