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Starting from early approaches within Generative Grammar in the late 1960s, the article describes and discusses the development of different theoretical frameworks of lexical decomposition of verbs. It presents the major subsequent conceptions of lexical decompositions, namely, Dowty’s approach to lexical decomposition within Montague Semantics, Jackendoff’s Conceptual Semantics, the LCS decompositions emerging from the MIT Lexicon Project, Pustejovsky’s Event Structure Theory, Wierzbicka’s Natural Semantic Metalanguage, Wunderlich’s Lexical Decompositional Grammar, Hale and Kayser’s Lexical Relational Structures, and Distributed Morphology. For each of these approaches, (i) it sketches their origins and motivation, (ii) it describes the general structure of decompositions and their location within the theory, (iii) it explores their explanative value for major phenomena of verb semantics and syntax, (iv) and it briefly evaluates the impact of the theory. Referring to discussions in article 7 [Semantics: Foundations, History and Methods] (Engelberg) Lexical decomposition, a number of theoretical topics are taken up throughout the paper concerning the interpretation of decompositions, the basic inventory of decompositional predicates, the location of decompositions on the different levels of linguistic representation (syntactic, semantic, conceptual), and the role they play for the interfaces between these levels.
Thema des Aufsatzes ist die Komplementsatzdistribution im Deutschen. Überprüft wird die These, dass die lexikalisch-semantischen Eigenschaften der einbettenden Verben, dabei v.a. ihre Kontrolleigenschaften sowie ihre temporale und modale Spezifikation, dafür verantwortlich sind, ob bevorzugt ein dass-Satz oder ein zu-Infinitiv selegiert wird. Eine korpuslinguistische Überprüfung dieser These zeigt, dass die genannten drei Kriterien in unterschiedlicher Weise von Bedeutung für die Komplementselektion sind. Als bedeutendster Faktor erweist sich das Kontrollkriterium. Ein weiteres wichtiges Ergebnis der Untersuchung ist, dass die Komplementselektion dem Prinzip der argumentstrukturellen Trägheit entspricht: Verben neigen dazu, als Essenz memorisierter Gebrauchsspuren eine graduelle Präferenz für ein bestimmtes Komplementationsmuster zu entwickeln.
Starting from early approaches within Generative Grammar in the late 1960s, the article describes and discusses the development of different theoretical frameworks of lexical decomposition of verbs. It presents the major subsequent conceptions of lexical decompositions, namely, Dowty’s approach to lexical decomposition within Montague Semantics, Jackendoff’s Conceptual Semantics, the LCS decompositions emerging from the MIT Lexicon Project, Pustejovsky’s Event Structure Theory, Wierzbicka’s Natural Semantic Metalanguage, Wunderlich’s Lexical Decompositional Grammar, Hale and Kayser’s Lexical Relational Structures, and Distributed Morphology. For each of these approaches, (i) it sketches their origins and motivation, (ii) it describes the general structure of decompositions and their location within the theory, (iii) it explores their explanative value for major phenomena of verb semantics and syntax, (iv) and it briefl y evaluates the impact of the theory. Referring to discussions in article 7 (Engelberg) Lexical decomposition, a number of theoretical topics are taken up throughout the paper concerning the interpretation of decompositions, the basic inventory of decompositional predicates, the location of decompositions on the different levels of linguistic representation (syntactic, semantic, conceptual), and the role they play for the interfaces between these levels.
Whether verbs have to be marked as punctual vs. durative has been a controversial issue from the very beginnings of research on aktionsarten in the last century right on up to modern theories of aspectual classes and aspect composition. Debates about the linguistic necessity of this distinction have often been accompanied by the question of what it means for a verb to be temporally punctual. In this paper I will, firstly, sketch the history of research on the punctual-durative distinction and present several linguistic arguments in its favor. Secondly, I will show how this distinction is captured in an eventstructure- based approach to lexical semantics. Thirdly, I will discuss the extent to which a precise definition of the notions used in lexical
representations helps avoid circular argumentation in lexical semantics. Finally, I will demonstrate how this can be done for the notion of ‘punctuality’ by clarifying the logical type of this predicate and relating it to central cognitive time concepts.
Lexical-semantic theories often suffer from the imprecision of the concepts they employ in their representations. This leads to a considerable decrease in empirical strength by inviting circular argumentation. A demonstration of how to go about overcoming such shortcomings will be carried out, using the lexical semantic concept of "punctuality" as an example. Firstly, I will argue that the distinction between punctuality and durativity plays a crucial role for the explanation of a wide range of syntactic and semantic phenomena. Secondly, I will discuss methodological issues involved in arriving at a more precise definition of punctuality and, finally, the notion of "punctuality" will be given an interpretation on the basis of extensive consultation of research on cognitive time concepts.
Valency and aspectuality : syntactic and semantic motivation for the notion of "change of state"
(1994)
Certain semantic properties of verbs have syntactic consequences in that they restrict the ability of the verb to occur in particular constructions. It will be argued that such semantic properties may not be introduced for syntactic purposes alone, but that the semantic nature and relevance of these properties has to be proved. In the following sections it will be shown which semantic verbal properties have to be assumed to capture the restrictions for the occurrence of a certain syntactic pattern in German, the so-called a construction These same properties will also turn out to be necessary for the explanation of semantic phenomena like sentential aspect. Finally, the meaning of the introduced notions and their theoretical status will be discussed.
The paper explores how verbs like helfen "help" should be treated within event semantics. These verbs allow both agentive NP-subjects and sentential CP-subjects. Their behavior with respect to adverbial modification reveals that in their agentive variant these verbs refer to events, while in their sentential variant they refer to states. The meaning that sentential helfen conveys is that the beneficiary is in a good disposition and that this state is brought about by what is expressed by the sentential subject. This involves a kind of subjective value statement about what is good for the beneficiary and what is not. The relation of "bringing about" involved here is not mainly one of causal dependence - lacking the typical denseness of causal chains - but one that involves supervenience. Supervenience, a notion widely used in moral theory and philosophy of the mind, allows accounting for the dependence of the rather subjective nature of the resultant state of helfen on particular events which occur in the world. The agentive variant of helfen is derived by embedding the meaning of sentential helfen into an event description.