Lexical semantics (also known as lexicosemantics), as a subfield of
linguistic
Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. It is called a scientific study because it entails a comprehensive, systematic, objective, and precise analysis of all aspects of language, particularly its nature and structure. Linguis ...
semantics
Semantics (from grc, σημαντικός ''sēmantikós'', "significant") is the study of reference, meaning, or truth. The term can be used to refer to subfields of several distinct disciplines, including philosophy
Philosophy (f ...
, is the study of word meanings.
[Pustejovsky, J. (2005) ]
Lexical Semantics: Overview
' in Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics, second edition, Volumes 1-14[Taylor, J. (2017) ]
Lexical Semantics
'. In B. Dancygier (Ed.), The Cambridge Handbook of Cognitive Linguistics (Cambridge Handbooks in Language and Linguistics, pp. 246-261). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. It includes the study of how words structure their meaning, how they act in grammar and
compositionality
In semantics, mathematical logic and related disciplines, the principle of compositionality is the principle that the meaning of a complex expression is determined by the meanings of its constituent expressions and the rules used to combine them. ...
,
and the relationships between the distinct senses and uses of a word.
The units of analysis in lexical semantics are lexical units which include not only words but also sub-words or sub-units such as
affix
In linguistics, an affix is a morpheme that is attached to a word stem to form a new word or word form. Affixes may be derivational, like English ''-ness'' and ''pre-'', or inflectional, like English plural ''-s'' and past tense ''-ed''. They ar ...
es and even
compound word
In linguistics, a compound is a lexeme (less precisely, a word or sign) that consists of more than one stem. Compounding, composition or nominal composition is the process of word formation that creates compound lexemes. Compounding occurs when ...
s and
phrase
In syntax and grammar, a phrase is a group of words or singular word acting as a grammatical unit. For instance, the English expression "the very happy squirrel" is a noun phrase which contains the adjective phrase "very happy". Phrases can consi ...
s. Lexical units include the catalogue of words in a language, the
lexicon
A lexicon is the vocabulary of a language or branch of knowledge (such as nautical or medical). In linguistics, a lexicon is a language's inventory of lexemes. The word ''lexicon'' derives from Koine Greek language, Greek word (), neuter of () ...
. Lexical semantics looks at how the meaning of the lexical units correlates with the structure of the language or
syntax
In linguistics, syntax () is the study of how words and morphemes combine to form larger units such as phrases and sentences. Central concerns of syntax include word order, grammatical relations, hierarchical sentence structure ( constituency) ...
. This is referred to as
syntax-semantics interface.
The study of lexical semantics looks at:
* the classification and decomposition of lexical items
* the differences and similarities in lexical semantic structure cross-linguistically
* the relationship of lexical meaning to
sentence meaning and
syntax
In linguistics, syntax () is the study of how words and morphemes combine to form larger units such as phrases and sentences. Central concerns of syntax include word order, grammatical relations, hierarchical sentence structure ( constituency) ...
.
Lexical units, also referred to as syntactic atoms, can stand alone such as in the case of root words or parts of compound words or they necessarily attach to other units such as prefixes and suffixes do. The former are called
free morpheme
In linguistics, a bound morpheme is a morpheme (the elementary unit of morphosyntax) that can appear only as part of a larger expression; a free morpheme (or unbound morpheme) is one that can stand alone. A bound morpheme is a type of bound form, ...
s and the latter
bound morpheme
In linguistics, a bound morpheme is a morpheme (the elementary unit of morphosyntax) that can appear only as part of a larger expression; a free morpheme (or unbound morpheme) is one that can stand alone. A bound morpheme is a type of bound form, ...
s. They fall into a narrow range of meanings (
semantic field
In linguistics, a semantic field is a lexical set of words grouped semantically (by meaning) that refers to a specific subject.Howard Jackson, Etienne Zé Amvela, ''Words, Meaning, and Vocabulary'', Continuum, 2000, p14. The term is also used in ...
s) and can combine with each other to generate new denotations.
Cognitive semantics
Cognitive semantics is part of the cognitive linguistics movement. Semantics is the study of linguistic meaning. Cognitive semantics holds that language is part of a more general human cognitive ability, and can therefore only describe the world a ...
is the linguistic paradigm/framework that since the 1980s has generated the most studies in lexical semantics, introducing innovations like
prototype theory
Prototype theory is a theory of categorization in cognitive science, particularly in psychology and cognitive linguistics, in which there is a graded degree of belonging to a conceptual category, and some members are more central than others. I ...
,
conceptual metaphor
In cognitive linguistics, conceptual metaphor, or cognitive metaphor, refers to the understanding of one idea, or conceptual domain, in terms of another. An example of this is the understanding of quantity in terms of directionality (e.g. "the pr ...
s, and
frame semantics.
Lexical relations: how meanings relate to each other
Lexical items contain information about category (lexical and syntactic), form and meaning. The semantics related to these categories then relate to each lexical item in the
lexicon
A lexicon is the vocabulary of a language or branch of knowledge (such as nautical or medical). In linguistics, a lexicon is a language's inventory of lexemes. The word ''lexicon'' derives from Koine Greek language, Greek word (), neuter of () ...
.
Lexical items can also be semantically classified based on whether their meanings are derived from single lexical units or from their surrounding environment.
Lexical items participate in regular patterns of association with each other. Some relations between lexical items include
hyponymy, hypernymy,
synonym
A synonym is a word, morpheme, or phrase that means exactly or nearly the same as another word, morpheme, or phrase in a given language. For example, in the English language, the words ''begin'', ''start'', ''commence'', and ''initiate'' are all ...
y, and
antonymy, as well as
homonym
In linguistics, homonyms are words which are homographs (words that share the same spelling, regardless of pronunciation), or homophones ( equivocal words, that share the same pronunciation, regardless of spelling), or both. Using this definiti ...
y.
Hyponymy and hypernymy
Hyponymy and hypernymy
In linguistics, semantics, general semantics, and ontologies, hyponymy () is a semantic relation between a hyponym denoting a subtype and a hypernym or hyperonym (sometimes called umbrella term or blanket term) denoting a supertype. In other ...
refers to a relationship between a general term and the more specific terms that fall under the category of the general term.
For example, the colors ''red'', ''green'', ''blue'' and ''yellow'' are hyponyms. They fall under the general term of ''color'', which is the hypernym.
![Colortaxonomy](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/69/Colortaxonomy.png)
Hyponyms and hypernyms can be described by using a
taxonomy
Taxonomy is the practice and science of categorization or classification.
A taxonomy (or taxonomical classification) is a scheme of classification, especially a hierarchical classification, in which things are organized into groups or types. ...
, as seen in the example.
Synonymy
Synonymy
A synonym is a word, morpheme, or phrase that means exactly or nearly the same as another word, morpheme, or phrase in a given language. For example, in the English language, the words ''begin'', ''start'', ''commence'', and ''initiate'' are all ...
refers to words that are pronounced and spelled differently but contain the same meaning.
Antonymy
Antonymy refers to words that are related by having the opposite meanings to each other.
There are three types of antonyms:
graded antonyms,
complementary antonyms, and
relational antonyms.
Homonymy
Homonymy refers to the relationship between words that are spelled or pronounced the same way but hold different meanings.
Polysemy
Polysemy
Polysemy ( or ; ) is the capacity for a sign (e.g. a symbol, a morpheme, a word, or a phrase) to have multiple related meanings. For example, a word can have several word senses. Polysemy is distinct from ''monosemy'', where a word has a singl ...
refers to a word having two or more related meanings.
Semantic networks
Lexical semantics also explores whether the meaning of a lexical unit is established by looking at its neighbourhood in the
semantic net
Semantics (from grc, σημαντικός ''sēmantikós'', "significant") is the study of reference, meaning, or truth. The term can be used to refer to subfields of several distinct disciplines, including philosophy, linguistics and compu ...
, (words it occurs with in natural sentences), or whether the meaning is already locally contained in the lexical unit.
In English,
WordNet
WordNet is a lexical database of semantic relations between words in more than 200 languages. WordNet links words into semantic relations including synonyms, hyponyms, and meronyms. The synonyms are grouped into '' synsets'' with short definition ...
is an example of a semantic network. It contains English words that are grouped into
synsets. Some semantic relations between these synsets are
meronymy
In linguistics, meronymy () is a semantic relation between a meronym denoting a part and a holonym denoting a whole. In simpler terms, a meronym is in a ''part-of'' relationship with its holonym. For example, ''finger'' is a meronym of ''hand' ...
,
hyponymy,
synonymy
A synonym is a word, morpheme, or phrase that means exactly or nearly the same as another word, morpheme, or phrase in a given language. For example, in the English language, the words ''begin'', ''start'', ''commence'', and ''initiate'' are all ...
, and
antonymy.
Semantic fields
How lexical items map onto concepts
First proposed by Trier in the 1930s,
[Famer, Pamela B.; Mairal Usón, Ricardo (1999). "Constructing a Lexicon of English Verbs". Functional Grammar (in English) 23 (illustrated ed.). Walter de Gruyter. p. 350. .] semantic field
In linguistics, a semantic field is a lexical set of words grouped semantically (by meaning) that refers to a specific subject.Howard Jackson, Etienne Zé Amvela, ''Words, Meaning, and Vocabulary'', Continuum, 2000, p14. The term is also used in ...
theory proposes that a group of words with interrelated meanings can be categorized under a larger conceptual domain. This entire entity is thereby known as a semantic field. The words ''boil'', ''bake'', ''fry'', and ''roast'', for example, would fall under the larger semantic category of ''cooking''. Semantic field theory asserts that lexical meaning cannot be fully understood by looking at a word in isolation, but by looking at a group of semantically related words. Semantic relations can refer to any relationship in meaning between
lexeme
A lexeme () is a unit of lexical meaning that underlies a set of words that are related through inflection. It is a basic abstract unit of meaning, a unit of morphological analysis in linguistics that roughly corresponds to a set of forms taken ...
s, including synonymy ''(big'' and ''large),'' antonymy ''(big'' and ''small),'' hypernymy and hyponymy ''(rose'' and ''flower),'' converseness ''(buy'' and ''sell),'' and incompatibility. Semantic field theory does not have concrete guidelines that determine the extent of semantic relations between lexemes. The abstract validity of the theory is a subject of debate.
Knowing the meaning of a lexical item therefore means knowing the semantic entailments the word brings with it. However, it is also possible to understand only one word of a semantic field without understanding other related words. Take, for example, a taxonomy of plants and animals: it is possible to understand the words ''rose'' and ''rabbit'' without knowing what a ''marigold'' or a ''muskrat'' is. This is applicable to colors as well, such as understanding the word ''red'' without knowing the meaning of ''scarlet,'' but understanding ''scarlet'' without knowing the meaning of ''red'' may be less likely. A semantic field can thus be very large or very small, depending on the level of contrast being made between lexical items. While cat and dog both fall under the larger semantic field of animal, including the breed of dog, like ''German shepherd,'' would require contrasts between other breeds of dog (e.g. ''corgi'', or ''poodle''), thus expanding the semantic field further.
How lexical items map onto events
Event structure is defined as the semantic relation of a verb and its syntactic properties.
Event structure has three primary components:
* primitive event type of the lexical item
* event composition rules
* mapping rules to lexical structure
Verbs can belong to one of three types: states, processes, or transitions.
(1a) defines the state of the door being closed; there is no opposition in this
predicate
Predicate or predication may refer to:
* Predicate (grammar), in linguistics
* Predication (philosophy)
* several closely related uses in mathematics and formal logic:
**Predicate (mathematical logic)
**Propositional function
**Finitary relation, o ...
. (1b) and (1c) both have predicates showing transitions of the door going from being implicitly ''open'' to ''closed''. (1b) gives the
intransitive
In grammar, an intransitive verb is a verb whose context does not entail a direct object. That lack of transitivity distinguishes intransitive verbs from transitive verbs, which entail one or more objects. Additionally, intransitive verbs ar ...
use of the verb close, with no explicit mention of the causer, but (1c) makes explicit mention of the
agent
Agent may refer to:
Espionage, investigation, and law
*, spies or intelligence officers
* Law of agency, laws involving a person authorized to act on behalf of another
** Agent of record, a person with a contractual agreement with an insuranc ...
involved in the action.
Syntactic basis of event structure: a brief history
Generative semantics in the 1960s
The analysis of these different lexical units had a decisive role in the field of "
generative linguistics" during the 1960s.
The term ''generative'' was proposed by Noam Chomsky in his book
Syntactic Structures
''Syntactic Structures'' is an influential work in linguistics by American linguist Noam Chomsky, originally published in 1957. It is an elaboration of his teacher Zellig Harris's model of transformational generative grammar. A short monograph ...
published in 1957. The term ''generative linguistics'' was based on Chomsky's
generative grammar
Generative grammar, or generativism , is a linguistic theory that regards linguistics as the study of a hypothesised innate grammatical structure. It is a biological or biologistic modification of earlier structuralist theories of linguisti ...
, a linguistic theory that states systematic sets of rules (
X' theory
In linguistics, X-bar theory is a model of phrase-structure grammar and a theory of syntactic category formation that was first proposed by Noam Chomsky in 1970Chomsky, Noam (1970). Remarks on Nominalization. In: R. Jacobs and P. Rosenbaum (eds.) ...
) can predict grammatical phrases within a natural language. Generative Linguistics is also known as Government-Binding Theory.
Generative linguists of the 1960s, including
Noam Chomsky
Avram Noam Chomsky (born December 7, 1928) is an American public intellectual: a linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, historian, social critic, and political activist. Sometimes called "the father of modern linguistics", Chomsky is ...
and
Ernst von Glasersfeld
Ernst von Glasersfeld (March 8, 1917, Munich – November 12, 2010, Leverett, Franklin County, Massachusetts) was a philosopher, and emeritus professor of psychology at the University of Georgia, research associate at the Scientific Reasoni ...
, believed semantic relations between
transitive verbs
A transitive verb is a verb that accepts one or more objects, for example, 'cleaned' in ''Donald cleaned the window''. This contrasts with intransitive verbs, which do not have objects, for example, 'panicked' in ''Donald panicked''.
Transitiv ...
and
intransitive verbs
In grammar, an intransitive verb is a verb whose context does not entail a direct object. That lack of transitivity distinguishes intransitive verbs from transitive verbs, which entail one or more objects. Additionally, intransitive verbs are ...
were tied to their independent syntactic organization.
This meant that they saw a simple verb phrase as encompassing a more complex syntactic structure.
Lexicalist theories in the 1980s
Lexicalist theories became popular during the 1980s, and emphasized that a word's internal structure was a question of
morphology
Morphology, from the Greek and meaning "study of shape", may refer to:
Disciplines
* Morphology (archaeology), study of the shapes or forms of artifacts
* Morphology (astronomy), study of the shape of astronomical objects such as nebulae, galaxies ...
and not of
syntax
In linguistics, syntax () is the study of how words and morphemes combine to form larger units such as phrases and sentences. Central concerns of syntax include word order, grammatical relations, hierarchical sentence structure ( constituency) ...
.
Lexicalist theories emphasized that complex words (resulting from compounding and derivation of
affixes
In linguistics, an affix is a morpheme that is attached to a word stem to form a new word or word form. Affixes may be derivational, like English ''-ness'' and ''pre-'', or inflectional, like English plural ''-s'' and past tense ''-ed''. They ...
) have lexical entries that are derived from morphology, rather than resulting from overlapping syntactic and phonological properties, as Generative Linguistics predicts. The distinction between Generative Linguistics and Lexicalist theories can be illustrated by considering the transformation of the word ''destroy'' to ''destruction'':
* Generative Linguistics theory: states the transformation of ''destroy'' → ''destruction'' as the nominal, ''nom'' + ''destroy,'' combined with
phonological rule
A phonological rule is a formal way of expressing a systematic phonological or morphophonological process or diachronic sound change in language. Phonological rules are commonly used in generative phonology as a notation to capture sound-related o ...
s that produce the output ''destruction''. Views this transformation as independent of the morphology.
* Lexicalist theory: sees ''destroy'' and ''destruction'' as having idiosyncratic lexical entries based on their differences in morphology. Argues that each morpheme contributes specific meaning. States that the formation of the complex word ''destruction'' is accounted for by a set of ''Lexical Rules,'' which are different and independent from syntactic rules.
A
lexical entry lists the basic properties of either the whole word, or the individual properties of the morphemes that make up the word itself. The properties of
lexical item
In lexicography, a lexical item is a single word, a part of a word, or a chain of words ( catena) that forms the basic elements of a language's lexicon (≈ vocabulary). Examples are ''cat'', ''traffic light'', ''take care of'', ''by the way ...
s include their category selection ''c-selection'', selectional properties ''s-selection'', (also known as semantic selection),
phonological properties, and features. The properties of lexical items are idiosyncratic, unpredictable, and contain specific information about the lexical items that they describe.
The following is an example of a lexical entry for the verb ''put'':
Lexicalist theories state that a word's meaning is derived from its morphology or a speaker's lexicon, and not its syntax. The degree of morphology's influence on overall grammar remains controversial.
Currently, the linguists that perceive one engine driving both morphological items and syntactic items are in the majority.
Micro-syntactic theories: 1990s to the present
By the early 1990s, Chomsky's
minimalist framework on language structure led to sophisticated probing techniques for investigating languages. These probing techniques analyzed negative data over
prescriptive grammar
Linguistic prescription, or prescriptive grammar, is the establishment of rules defining preferred usage of language. These rules may address such linguistic aspects as spelling, pronunciation, vocabulary, syntax, and semantics. Sometimes info ...
s, and because of Chomsky's proposed Extended Projection Principle in 1986, probing techniques showed where specifiers of a sentence had moved to in order to fulfill the EPP. This allowed syntacticians to hypothesize that lexical items with complex syntactic features (such as
ditransitive
In grammar, a ditransitive (or bitransitive) verb is a transitive verb whose contextual use corresponds to a subject and two objects which refer to a theme and a recipient. According to certain linguistics considerations, these objects may be ca ...
,
inchoative
Inchoative aspect (abbreviated or ) is a grammatical aspect, referring to the beginning of a state. It can be found in conservative Indo-European languages such as Latin and Lithuanian, and also in Finnic languages or European derived languages w ...
, and
causative
In linguistics, a causative (abbreviated ) is a valency-increasing operationPayne, Thomas E. (1997). Describing morphosyntax: A guide for field linguists'' Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p. 173–186. that indicates that a subject either ...
verbs), could select their own specifier element within a
syntax tree Syntax tree may refer to:
* Abstract syntax tree, used in computer science
* Concrete syntax tree
A parse tree or parsing tree or derivation tree or concrete syntax tree is an ordered, rooted tree that represents the syntactic structure of a str ...
construction. (For more on probing techniques, see Suci, G., Gammon, P., & Gamlin, P. (1979)).
This brought the focus back on the
syntax-lexical semantics interface; however, syntacticians still sought to understand the relationship between complex verbs and their related syntactic structure, and to what degree the syntax was projected from the lexicon, as the Lexicalist theories argued.
In the mid 1990s, linguists
Heidi Harley
Heidi Britton Harley (born September 26, 1969) is a Professor of Linguistics at the University of Arizona. Her areas of specialization are formal syntactic theory, morphology, and lexical semantics.
Career
Harley was born in Oregon, but was ra ...
,
Samuel Jay Keyser
Samuel Jay Keyser (born 7 July 1935) is an American theoretical linguist who is an authority on the history and structure of the English language and on linguistic approaches to literary criticism.
Biography
Keyser received a BA degree in Englis ...
, and
Kenneth Hale addressed some of the implications posed by complex verbs and a lexically-derived syntax. Their proposals indicated that the predicates CAUSE and BECOME, referred to as subunits within a Verb Phrase, acted as a lexical semantic template. ''Predicates'' are verbs and state or affirm something about the subject of the sentence or the argument of the sentence. For example, the predicates ''went'' and ''is here'' below affirm the argument of the subject and the state of the subject respectively.
The subunits of Verb Phrases led to the Argument Structure Hypothesis and Verb Phrase Hypothesis, both outlined below. The recursion found under the "umbrella" Verb Phrase, the VP Shell, accommodated binary-branching theory; another critical topic during the 1990s. Current theory recognizes the predicate in Specifier position of a tree in inchoative/
anticausative
An anticausative verb ( abbreviated ) is an intransitive verb that shows an event affecting its subject, while giving no semantic or syntactic indication of the cause of the event. The single argument of the anticausative verb (its subject) is a ...
verbs (intransitive), or causative verbs (transitive) is what selects the
theta role
In generative grammar, a theta role or θ-role is the formal device for representing syntactic argument structure—the number and type of noun phrases—required syntactically by a particular verb. For example, the verb ''put'' requires three a ...
conjoined with a particular verb.
Hale & Keyser 1990
Kenneth Hale and
Samuel Jay Keyser
Samuel Jay Keyser (born 7 July 1935) is an American theoretical linguist who is an authority on the history and structure of the English language and on linguistic approaches to literary criticism.
Biography
Keyser received a BA degree in Englis ...
introduced their thesis on lexical argument structure during the early 1990s.
They argue that a predicate's argument structure is represented in the syntax, and that the syntactic representation of the predicate is a lexical projection of its arguments. Thus, the structure of a predicate is strictly a lexical representation, where each phrasal head projects its argument onto a phrasal level within the syntax tree. The selection of this phrasal head is based on Chomsky's Empty Category Principle. This lexical projection of the predicate's argument onto the syntactic structure is the foundation for the Argument Structure Hypothesis.
This idea coincides with Chomsky's
Projection Principle
In linguistics, the projection principle is a stipulation proposed by Noam Chomsky as part of the phrase structure component of generative-transformational grammar. The projection principle is used in the derivation of phrases under the auspices ...
, because it forces a VP to be selected locally and be selected by a Tense Phrase (TP).
Based on the interaction between lexical properties, locality, and the properties of the EPP (where a phrasal head selects another phrasal element locally), Hale and Keyser make the claim that the Specifier position or a complement are the only two semantic relations that project a predicate's argument. In 2003, Hale and Keyser put forward this hypothesis and argued that a lexical unit must have one or the other, Specifier or Complement, but cannot have both.
Halle & Marantz 1993
Morris Halle
Morris Halle (; July 23, 1923 – April 2, 2018) was a Latvian-American, Latvian-born Jewish United States, American Linguistics, linguist who was an Institute Professor, and later professor emeritus, of linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute ...
and
Alec Marantz
Alec Marantz (born January 31, 1959) is an American linguist and researcher in the fields of syntax, morphology, and neurolinguistics.
Until 2007, he was Kenan Sahin Distinguished Professor of Linguistics at Massachusetts Institute of Technolo ...
introduced the notion of
distributed morphology
In generative linguistics, Distributed Morphology is a theoretical framework introduced in 1993 by Morris Halle and Alec Marantz.Halle, Morris & Alec Marantz. 1993. 'Distributed Morphology and the Pieces of Inflection.' In The View from Buildin ...
in 1993. This theory views the syntactic structure of words as a result of morphology and semantics, instead of the morpho-semantic interface being predicted by the syntax. Essentially, the idea that under the Extended Projection Principle there is a local boundary under which a special meaning occurs. This meaning can only occur if a head-projecting morpheme is present within the local domain of the syntactic structure.
[Marantz, Alec. 1997. ]
No escape from syntax: Don't try morphological analysis in the privacy of your own Lexicon
' Proceedings of the 21st Annual Penn Linguistics Colloquium: Penn Working Papers in Linguistics The following is an example of the tree structure proposed by distributed morphology for the sentence ''"John's destroying the city"''. ''Destroy'' is the root, V-1 represents verbalization, and D represents nominalization.
Ramchand 2008
In her 2008 book, ''Verb Meaning and The Lexicon: A First-Phase Syntax'', linguist
Gillian Ramchand acknowledges the roles of lexical entries in the selection of complex verbs and their arguments.
'First-Phase' syntax proposes that event structure and event participants are directly represented in the syntax by means of
binary branching. This branching ensures that the Specifier is the consistently subject, even when investigating the projection of a complex verb's lexical entry and its corresponding syntactic construction. This generalization is also present in Ramchand's theory that the complement of a head for a complex verb phrase must co-describe the verb's event.
Ramchand also introduced the concept of Homomorphic Unity, which refers to the structural synchronization between the head of a complex verb phrase and its complement. According to Ramchand, Homomorphic Unity is "when two event descriptors are syntactically Merged, the structure of the complement must unify with the structure of the head."
Classification of event types
Intransitive verbs: unaccusative versus unergative
The unaccusative hypothesis was put forward by David Perlmutter in 1987, and describes how two classes of intransitive verbs have two different syntactic structures. These are
unaccusative verb In linguistics, an unaccusative verb is an intransitive verb whose grammatical subject is not a semantic agent. In other words, the subject does not actively initiate, or is not actively responsible for, the action expressed by the verb. An unaccus ...
s and
unergative verb
An unergative verb is an intransitive verb that is characterized semantically by having a subject argument which is an ''agent'' that actively initiates the action expressed by the verb.
For example, in English, ''talk'' and ''resign'' in the se ...
s.
[Lappin, S. (Ed.). (1996). Handbook of contemporary semantic theory. Oxford, UK: Blackwell Publishers.] These classes of verbs are defined by Perlmutter only in syntactic terms. They have the following structures underlyingly:
* unaccusative verb: __
VP V NP">sub>VP V NP
* unergative verb: NP
VP V">sub>VP V
The following is an example from English:
In (2a) the verb underlyingly takes a direct object, while in (2b) the verb underlyingly takes a subject.
Transitivity alternations: the inchoative/causative alternation
The change-of-state property of Verb Phrases (VP) is a significant observation for the syntax of lexical semantics because it provides evidence that subunits are embedded in the VP structure, and that the meaning of the entire VP is influenced by this internal grammatical structure. (For example, the VP ''the vase broke'' carries a change-of-state meaning of the vase becoming broken, and thus has a silent BECOME subunit within its underlying structure.) There are two types of change-of-state predicates:
inchoative
Inchoative aspect (abbreviated or ) is a grammatical aspect, referring to the beginning of a state. It can be found in conservative Indo-European languages such as Latin and Lithuanian, and also in Finnic languages or European derived languages w ...
and
causative
In linguistics, a causative (abbreviated ) is a valency-increasing operationPayne, Thomas E. (1997). Describing morphosyntax: A guide for field linguists'' Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p. 173–186. that indicates that a subject either ...
.
Inchoative verbs are
intransitive
In grammar, an intransitive verb is a verb whose context does not entail a direct object. That lack of transitivity distinguishes intransitive verbs from transitive verbs, which entail one or more objects. Additionally, intransitive verbs ar ...
, meaning that they occur without a direct object, and these verbs express that their subject has undergone a certain change of state. Inchoative verbs are also known as
anticausative
An anticausative verb ( abbreviated ) is an intransitive verb that shows an event affecting its subject, while giving no semantic or syntactic indication of the cause of the event. The single argument of the anticausative verb (its subject) is a ...
verbs.
Causative verbs are transitive, meaning that they occur with a direct object, and they express that the subject causes a change of state in the object.
Linguist
Martin Haspelmath
Martin Haspelmath (; born 2 February 1963 in Hoya, Lower Saxony) is a German linguist working in the field of linguistic typology. He is a researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, where he worked from 199 ...
classifies inchoative/causative verb pairs under three main categories: causative, anticausative, and non-directed alternations.
Non-directed alternations are further subdivided into labile, equipollent, and suppletive alternations.
English
English usually refers to:
* English language
* English people
English may also refer to:
Peoples, culture, and language
* ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England
** English national ide ...
tends to favour
labile alternations,
meaning that the same verb is used in the inchoative and causative forms.
This can be seen in the following example: ''broke'' is an intransitive inchoative verb in (3a) and a transitive causative verb in (3b).
As seen in the underlying tree structure for (3a), the silent subunit BECOME is embedded within the Verb Phrase (VP), resulting in the inchoative change-of-state meaning (y become z). In the underlying tree structure for (3b), the silent subunits CAUS and BECOME are both embedded within the VP, resulting in the causative change-of-state meaning (x cause y become z).
English change of state verbs are often de-adjectival, meaning that they are derived from adjectives. We can see this in the following example:
In example (4a) we start with a stative intransitive adjective, and derive (4b) where we see an intransitive inchoative verb. In (4c) we see a transitive causative verb.
Marked inchoatives
Some languages (e.g.,
German
German(s) may refer to:
* Germany (of or related to)
** Germania (historical use)
* Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language
** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law
**Ge ...
,
Italian
Italian(s) may refer to:
* Anything of, from, or related to the people of Italy over the centuries
** Italians, an ethnic group or simply a citizen of the Italian Republic or Italian Kingdom
** Italian language, a Romance language
*** Regional Ita ...
, and
French), have multiple morphological classes of inchoative verbs.
Generally speaking, these languages separate their inchoative verbs into three classes: verbs that are obligatorily unmarked (they are not marked with a
reflexive pronoun
A reflexive pronoun is a pronoun that refers to another noun or pronoun (its antecedent) within the same sentence.
In the English language specifically, a reflexive pronoun will end in ''-self'' or ''-selves'', and refer to a previously n ...
,
clitic
In morphology and syntax, a clitic (, backformed from Greek "leaning" or "enclitic"Crystal, David. ''A First Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics''. Boulder, CO: Westview, 1980. Print.) is a morpheme that has syntactic characteristics of a w ...
, or
affix
In linguistics, an affix is a morpheme that is attached to a word stem to form a new word or word form. Affixes may be derivational, like English ''-ness'' and ''pre-'', or inflectional, like English plural ''-s'' and past tense ''-ed''. They ar ...
), verbs that are optionally marked, and verbs that are obligatorily marked. The causative verbs in these languages remain unmarked.
Haspelmath
Martin Haspelmath (; born 2 February 1963 in Hoya, Lower Saxony) is a German linguist working in the field of linguistic typology. He is a researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, where he worked from 199 ...
refers to this as the
anticausative
An anticausative verb ( abbreviated ) is an intransitive verb that shows an event affecting its subject, while giving no semantic or syntactic indication of the cause of the event. The single argument of the anticausative verb (its subject) is a ...
alternation.
For example, inchoative verbs in
German
German(s) may refer to:
* Germany (of or related to)
** Germania (historical use)
* Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language
** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law
**Ge ...
are classified into three morphological classes. ''Class A'' verbs necessarily form inchoatives with the reflexive pronoun ', ''Class B'' verbs form inchoatives necessarily without the reflexive pronoun, and ''Class C'' verbs form inchoatives optionally with or without the reflexive pronoun. In example (5), the verb ' is an unmarked inchoative verb from ''Class B'', which also remains unmarked in its causative form.
In contrast, the verb ''öffnete'' is a ''Class A'' verb which necessarily takes the reflexive pronoun ''sich'' in its inchoative form, but remains unmarked in its causative form.
There has been some debate as to whether the different classes of inchoative verbs are purely based in morphology, or whether the differentiation is derived from the lexical-semantic properties of each individual verb. While this debate is still unresolved in languages such as
Italian
Italian(s) may refer to:
* Anything of, from, or related to the people of Italy over the centuries
** Italians, an ethnic group or simply a citizen of the Italian Republic or Italian Kingdom
** Italian language, a Romance language
*** Regional Ita ...
,
French, and
Greek
Greek may refer to:
Greece
Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe:
*Greeks, an ethnic group.
*Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family.
**Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...
, it has been suggested by linguist Florian Schäfer that there are semantic differences between marked and unmarked inchoatives in
German
German(s) may refer to:
* Germany (of or related to)
** Germania (historical use)
* Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language
** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law
**Ge ...
. Specifically, that only unmarked inchoative verbs allow an unintentional causer reading (meaning that they can take on an "''x unintentionally caused y''" reading).
Marked causatives
Causative morphemes are present in the verbs of many languages (e.g.,
Tagalog,
Malagasy,
Turkish, etc.), usually appearing in the form of an affix on the verb.
This can be seen in the following examples from
Tagalog, where the causative prefix ''pag-'' (realized here as ''nag'') attaches to the verb ''tumba'' to derive a causative transitive verb in (7b), but the prefix does not appear in the inchoative intransitive verb in (7a).
Haspelmath
Martin Haspelmath (; born 2 February 1963 in Hoya, Lower Saxony) is a German linguist working in the field of linguistic typology. He is a researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, where he worked from 199 ...
refers to this as the
causative
In linguistics, a causative (abbreviated ) is a valency-increasing operationPayne, Thomas E. (1997). Describing morphosyntax: A guide for field linguists'' Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p. 173–186. that indicates that a subject either ...
alternation.
Ditransitive verbs
Kayne's 1981 unambiguous path analysis
Richard Kayne proposed the idea of unambiguous paths as an alternative to c-commanding relationships, which is the type of structure seen in examples (8). The idea of unambiguous paths stated that an antecedent and an anaphor should be connected via an unambiguous path. This means that the line connecting an antecedent and an anaphor cannot be broken by another argument.
[Kayne, R. (1981). Unambiguous paths. In R. May & F. Koster (Eds.), Levels of syntactic representation (143-184). Cinnaminson, NJ: Foris Publications.] When applied to ditransitive verbs, this hypothesis introduces the structure in diagram (8a). In this tree structure it can be seen that the same path can be traced from either DP to the verb. Tree diagram (7b) illustrates this structure with an example from English. This analysis was a step toward binary branching trees, which was a theoretical change that was furthered by Larson's VP-shell analysis.
Larson's 1988 "VP-shell" analysis
Larson posited his Single Complement Hypothesis in which he stated that every complement is introduced with one verb. The Double Object Construction presented in 1988 gave clear evidence of a hierarchical structure using asymmetrical binary branching.
Sentences with double objects occur with ditransitive verbs, as we can see in the following example:
![Vpshelltree](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/71/Vpshelltree.png)
It appears as if the verb ''send'' has two objects, or complements (arguments): both ''Mary'', the recipient and ''parcel'', the theme. The argument structure of ditransitive verb phrases is complex and has undergone different structural hypothesis.
The original structural hypothesis was that of ternary branching seen in (9a) and (9b), but following from Kayne's 1981 analysis, Larson maintained that each complement is introduced by a verb.
Their hypothesis shows that there is a lower verb embedded within a VP shell that combines with an upper verb (can be invisible), thus creating a VP shell (as seen in the tree diagram to the right). Most current theories no longer allow the ternary tree structure of (9a) and (9b), so the theme and the goal/recipient are seen in a hierarchical relationship within a
binary branching structure.
Following are examples of Larson's tests to show that the hierarchical (superior) order of any two objects aligns with a linear order, so that the second is governed (c-commanded) by the first.
This is in keeping with X'Bar Theory of Phrase Structure Grammar, with Larson's tree structure using the empty Verb to which the V is raised.
Reflexives and reciprocals (anaphors) show this relationship in which they must be c-commanded by their antecedents, such that the (10a) is grammatical but (10b) is not:
A pronoun must have a quantifier as its antecedent:
Question words follow this order:
The effect of negative polarity means that "any" must have a negative quantifier as an antecedent:
![Larsoncausative](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4d/Larsoncausative.png)
These tests with ditransitive verbs that confirm c-command also confirm the presence of underlying or invisible causative verbs. In ditransitive verbs such as ''give someone something'', ''send someone something'', ''show someone something'' etc. there is an underlying causative meaning that is represented in the underlying structure. As seen in example in (9a) above, ''John sent Mary a package'', there is the underlying meaning that 'John "caused" Mary to have a package'.
Larson proposed that both sentences in (9a) and (9b) share the same underlying structure and the difference on the surface lies in that the double object construction "John sent Mary a package" is derived by transformation from a NP plus PP construction "John sent a package to Mary".
Beck & Johnson's 2004 double object construction
Beck and Johnson, however, give evidence that the two underlying structures are not the same.
In so doing, they also give further evidence of the presence of two VPs where the verb attaches to a causative verb. In examples (14a) and (b), each of the double object constructions are alternated with NP + PP constructions.
Beck and Johnson show that the object in (15a) has a different relation to the motion verb as it is not able to carry the meaning of HAVING which the possessor (9a) and (15a) can. In (15a), Satoshi is an animate possessor and so is caused to HAVE kisimen. The PP ''for Satoshi'' in (15b) is of a benefactive nature and does not necessarily carry this meaning of HAVE either.
The underlying structures are therefore not the same. The differences lie in the semantics and the syntax of the sentences, in contrast to the transformational theory of Larson. Further evidence for the structural existence of VP shells with an invisible verbal unit is given in the application of the adjunct or modifier "again". Sentence (16) is ambiguous and looking into the two different meanings reveals a difference in structure.
However, in (17a), it is clear that it was Sally who repeated the action of opening the door. In (17b), the event is in the door being opened and Sally may or may not have opened it previously. To render these two different meanings, "again" attaches to VPs in two different places, and thus describes two events with a purely structural change.
See also
*
Content word Content words, in linguistics, are words that possess semantic content and contribute to the meaning of the sentence in which they occur. In a traditional approach, nouns were said to name objects and other entities, lexical verbs to indicate acti ...
*
Lexical chain The sequence between semantic related ordered words is classified as a lexical chain. A lexical chain is a sequence of related words in writing, spanning short (adjacent words or sentences) or long distances (entire text). A chain is independent of ...
*
Lexical markup framework
Language resource management - Lexical markup framework (LMF; ISO 24613:2008), is the International Organization for Standardization ISO/TC37 standard for natural language processing (NLP) and machine-readable dictionary (MRD) lexicons.
The scope ...
*
Lexical verb In linguistics a lexical verb or main verb is a member of an open class of verbs that includes all verbs except auxiliary verbs. Lexical verbs typically express action, state, or other predicate meaning. In contrast, auxiliary verbs express gramm ...
*
Minimal recursion semantics
*
Ontology
In metaphysics, ontology is the philosophical study of being, as well as related concepts such as existence, becoming, and reality.
Ontology addresses questions like how entities are grouped into categories and which of these entities exis ...
*
Polysemy
Polysemy ( or ; ) is the capacity for a sign (e.g. a symbol, a morpheme, a word, or a phrase) to have multiple related meanings. For example, a word can have several word senses. Polysemy is distinct from ''monosemy'', where a word has a singl ...
*
Semantic primes
Semantic primes or semantic primitives are a set of semantic concepts that are argued to be innately understood by all people but impossible to express in simpler terms. They represent words or phrases that are learned through practice but cannot ...
*
Semantic satiation
Semantic satiation is a psychological phenomenon in which repetition causes a word or phrase to temporarily lose meaning for the listener, who then perceives the speech as repeated meaningless sounds. Extended inspection or analysis (staring at ...
*
SemEval
SemEval (Semantic Evaluation) is an ongoing series of evaluations of computational semantic analysis systems; it evolved from the Senseval word sense evaluation series. The evaluations are intended to explore the nature of meaning in language. ...
*
Thematic role
*
Troponymy
*
Word sense
In linguistics, a word sense is one of the meanings of a word. For example, a dictionary may have over 50 different senses of the word "play", each of these having a different meaning based on the context of the word's usage in a sentence, as fo ...
*
Word-sense disambiguation
Word-sense disambiguation (WSD) is the process of identifying which sense of a word is meant in a sentence or other segment of context. In human language processing and cognition, it is usually subconscious/automatic but can often come to consc ...
References
External links
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Lexical Semantics
Semantics
Formal semantics (natural language)
Syntax–semantics interface