Revisiting verbs of emission: an update on some relevant theoretical accounts of lexical specification and argument structure of emission verbs

The paper addresses the question of what semantic properties lexicalized in verbs determine their syntactic behavior in intransitive motion events and in resultative constructions in English and Serbian. Special attention is devoted to English and...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Natasa Milivojevic
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: University of Montenegro 2016-06-01
Series:Logos et Littera: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Text
Subjects:
Online Access:http://www.ll.ac.me/treci%20broj/Milivojevic%2025-44.pdf
Description
Summary:The paper addresses the question of what semantic properties lexicalized in verbs determine their syntactic behavior in intransitive motion events and in resultative constructions in English and Serbian. Special attention is devoted to English and Serbian verbs of emission (specifically verbs of sound emission and partly also verbs of light, smell and substance emission) regarding their potential to surface as main verbs in these constructions and to combine with directional phrases within specific morphosyntactic templates (unaccusatives and unergatives). The presented research promotes a theoretical view according to which the established syntactic patterns can be applied across the whole class of verbs of emission to express a full er range of atypical verb meanings in motion events. Theoretical conclusions of the research are also relevant for a wider theoretical description of motion events and resultatives in a cross - linguistic perspective. The paper puts forth additional implica tions regarding the projectionalist approach to semantic verb classes against the theoretical framework of Beth Levin (1993). Finally, the paper considers the relevant points of structurally realized similarities via relevant constructional templates in En glish and in Serbian, as well as some important points of morphosyntactic divergence between the two languages. The conclusions presented aim at a more comprehensive contrastive language typology based on language “framing” parameters.
ISSN:2336-9884
2336-9884