Verbs of Emission as Motion Verbs

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  • 放出動詞の移動動詞用法について
  • ホウシュツ ドウシ ノ イドウ ドウシ ヨウホウ ニ ツイテ

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Abstract

In this article we deal with verbs of emission in the motion-verb use and argue that their motion-verb interpretation derives from the interaction between the qualia structure specific to the emission verbs and the semantic restriction concerning to the notion of “action chain”. Verbs of sound emission, which express the emission of a certain sound, function as motion verbs when they co-occur with directional PPs, as is shown in (i). On the contrary, verbs of sounds made by animals and verbs of manners of speaking as seen in (ii) and (iii), which are also related to sound, do not work as motion verbs even if they co-occur with directional PPs. (i) The cart rumbled down the street. (ii)*The duck quacked down the path. (iii)*He yelled down the street. We explain the difference in acceptability of (i)-(iii), in terms of qualia structure and the semantic restriction. Qualia structure plays an important role in the theory of “generative lexicon”; the semantic restriction that an activity represented in the semantic representation of verbs can be related to only one specific event is a natural consequence of the notion of the action chain. The qualia structures of the verbs in (ii) and (iii) contain an activity subevent. This type of activity subevent cannot combine with PP’s subevent representing movement, since activities represented by the activity subevent are for quacking or yelling. Thus, these verbs are not interpreted as motion verbs. On the other hand, in the qualia structure of emission verbs an activity subevent, which is related to emitting sound, is not activated, since only entities that do not do any activities of themselves are selected as sound emitters for these verbs. Therefore, qualia structures of emission verbs and of PPs combine with each other, which yields a semantic representation for motion verbs.

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