Seizi Iwata
Locative alternation and two levels of verb meaning
Verbs like load or spray are known
to alternate between two variants (John sprayed paint onto the wall
/ John sprayed the wall with paint ). Both Rappaport and Levin (1988)
and Pinker (1989) derive one variant from the other, but these lexical rule
approaches have a number of problems. This paper argues for a form-meaning
correspondence model which distinguishes between two levels of verb meaning:
that of a lexical head spray on
the one hand and that of a phrasal constituent spray paint onto the wall
or spray the wall with paint
on the other. Locative alternation stems from the fact that a frame
semantic scene encoded by spray can be construed in two alternate ways.
This proposed model allows us to account for the data straightforwardly without
suffering from the problems created by lexical rule approaches. This proposed
analysis is fundamentally the same as Goldberg’s (1995) in being a version of
Construction Grammar approach. But unlike Goldberg’s Correspondence
Principle-based account, my analysis makes the most of the semantic
compatibility between verbs and constructions, thereby giving a more
straightforward account of locative alternation.
Cognitive Linguistics, Walter de Gruyter
Print ISSN: 0936-5907
Volume: 16, 07/2005
Pages: 355 - 407
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