Verb Meaning in Context Alexandra Anna Spalek Universitat

Verb Meaning in Context
Alexandra Anna Spalek
Universitat Pompeu Fabra
MOTIVATION: The study of verbs within formal linguistics has focused mainly on the relation
between verb meaning and diathesis alternation (Levin, 1993), (Hale & Keyser, 1993), (Levin &
Rappaport Hovav, 1995), (Alexiadou, 2010) leaving aside the equally pressing question of how
to account for the pervasive differences in argument selection possibilities, which trigger
polysemy. Verbs like Spanish romper (break) appear in a bewildering range of contexts; for this
reason dictionaries easily split their meanings into as many as 20 to 30 senses (Real Academia
Española). But if this kind of variation in context is the rule rather than the exception, the
question that arises is: What does the range of possible contexts tell us about the verb’s meaning
itself, and is there a way to account for them avoiding positing so many senses? The goal of this
research is to explore the relation between the different uses of the verb break as shown in
example (1) – (4), and question if verb meaning actually varies as much as it might seem from a
simple look at a dictionary entry.
(1) Los
manifestantes
rompieron
una
ventana.
The
demonstrators
broke
a
windows.
The
demonstrators
broke
a
window.
(2) México
rompió
relaciones
diplomáticas
con
Cuba.
Mexico
broke
relations
diplomatic
with
Cuba.
Mexico
broke
diplomatic
relations
with
Cuba.
(3) La
propuesta
del
Gobierno
rompe
una
larga
tradición.
The
proposal
of
government
breaks
a
long
tradition.
The
Government’s
proposal
breaks
a
long
tradition.
(4) El
astronauta
rompió
el
récord
de
permanencia
en
un
transbordador.
The
astronaut
broke
the
record
of
permanence
in
a
shuttle.
PROCEDURE: The basic idea is that the multiplicity of senses can be reduced by abstraction from
detailed observation of verbs in context. Based on Asher and Lascarides (2001), we assume that
semantically delimited groups of verbs, namely the much-studied class of change of state verbs
(Rappaport Hovav & Levin, 2002) share some consistent semantic components, also called core
meaning (Rappaport Hovav & Levin, 1998), which is preserved in most of its uses. Our study
explores how the verbs’ core meaning must look like if we want to account for the variety of
theme arguments that break can take.
We observed break in a 250.000.000 word Spanish press corpus by applying the Corpus Pattern
Analysis methodology (Hanks, 2011), which allowed us to track in great detail the syntactic and
semantic behavior of a verb. By grouping verb concordances into syntactic patterns and
assigning each argument a semantic class label just like [Human], [Physical Object], we
obtained a detailed picture of the selectional preferences of break.
PROPOSAL: Our corpus observation revealed that the meaning of break is affected very
importantly by the semantics of the theme argument. While change of state predicates, in
general, applied to physical objects denote the change in material integrity of the objects, the
meaning of “alteration of the integrity” is not necessarily triggered with abstract themes. Thus
examples (2) – (4) describe the cessation of the state when an agreement, a tradition or a record
were holding, rather than the disintegration or destruction of these abstract objects. In addition,
COS verb combinations with abstract themes have more limited possibilities of taking natural
causes and instruments as causers, as illustrated in examples (5) – (8). This, in turn, correlates
with the very recent observation by Rappaport-Hovav and Levin (2011) that the choice of
subject varies with the choice of the object and that these subject-object interdependencies
follow basically form non-lexical factors, which determine when a cause can be found with
verbs that are to be taken as basically monadic.
(5) [Human / Natural Cause/ Instrument] romper [Physical Object]
El manifestante/ el viento/ la piedra rompieron una ventana.
The
demonstrator/
the
wind/
the
stone
broke
a
window.
(6) [Human / Institution/ ?Natural Cause/ ?Instrument] romper [Relation]
El
presidente/
México/
?el
viento/
?la
piedra
rompió
las
relaciones
diplomáticas
con
Cuba.
The
president/
Mexico/
*the
wind/
*the
stone
broke
the
diplomatic
relations
with
Cuba.
(7) [Human/ Act/ Dot Object/ ?Natural Cause/ ?Instrument] romper [Tradition]
El
gobierno/
las
propuesta/
?
el
veinto/
?la
piedra
rompe
una
larga
tradición.
The
government/
the
proposal/
*the
wind/
*
the
stone
breaks
a
long
tradition.
(8) [Human/ ?Institution/ ?Natural Cause/ ?Instrument ] romper [Limit]
El
astronauta/
?México/
?el
viento/
?la
piedra
rompió
el
récord
de
permanencia
en
un
transbordador.
The
astronaut/
?Mexico/
*the
wind/*the
stone
broke
the
record
of
permanence
in
a
shuttle.
In general, across the uses of break only a very abstract notion of ‘cession of a state’ is
preserved, and it is the particular selectional context, and specially the theme argument, which
concretes more details about the event. These facts support two conclusions:
1. Break is better understood as a very general change of state verb that simply brings
about the cessation of a holding state, rather than a verb of material disintegration.
2. Despite our naïve intuition that verbs describe very concrete events, the meaning of the
verb itself is actually quite abstract and only becomes fleshed out in combination with
its arguments.
KEY WORDS: lexical semantics, polysemy, change of state verbs.
SELECTED REFERENCES:
ALEXIADOU, A. (2010). On the morpho-syntax of (anti-)causative verbs. In M. Rappaport-Hovav, E.
Doron, & I. Sichel, Syntax, Lexical Semantics and Event Structure (pp. 177-203). Oxford: Oxford
University Press. ASHER, N., & LASCARIDES, A. (2001). Metaphor in Discourse. In P. Bouillon, & F.
Busa, The Language of Word Meaning (pp. 263-287). Cambridge: Cambrigde University Press. BOSQUE,
I. (2004). REDES Diccionario combinatorio del español contemporáneo. Madrid: Ediciones SM. HALE,
K., & KEYSER, S. (1993). On argument structure and the lexical expression of grammatical relations. In
K. Hale, & S. Keyser, The View from Building 20: Essays in Linguistics in Honor of Sylvain Bromberger
(pp. 53-110). Cambridge: MIT Press. HANKS, P. (2011). Lexical Analysis: Norms and Exploitations.
LEVIN, B. (1993). English Verb Classes and Alternations: A Preliminary Investigation. Chicago: The
University of Chicago Press. LEVIN, B., & RAPPAPORT HOVAV, M. (1995). Unaccusativity At the
Syntax-Lexical Semantics Interface. Cambridge: Massachusetts Institute of Technology. RAPPAPORT
HOVAV, M., & LEVIN, B. (2002). Change of State Verbs: Implications for Theories of Argument
Projection. Proceedings of the 28th Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society, (pp. 269-280).
Berkeley. RAPPAPORT HOVAV, M., & LEVIN, B. (1998). Building Verb Meanings. In M. Butt, & W.
Geuder, The Projection of Arguments, Lexical and Compositional Factors (pp. 97-134). Stanford: CSLI
Publications. RAPPAPORT-HOVAV, M., & LEVIN, B. (2011). Lexicon Uniformity and the Causative
Alternation. En M. Everaert, M. Marelj, & T. Siloni, The Theta System: Argument Structure at the
Interface. Oxford: Oxford University Press. REAL ACADEMIA ESPAÑOLA. (n.d.). Real Academia
Española. Retrieved Junio 20, 2008 from Diccionario de la Lengua Española: http://www.rae.es/rae.html