The semantics of verbs

The novelty of the work verb plays a very imperative role in a sentence. It is generally inflected for tense, aspect, mood, gender, number, person, etc. With the help of verbs one can express a situation, a quality o f somebody or something, an event or a happening. Accordingly, the role o f verbs in the semantic level is also different. Some verbs may be actionoriented while some show a state, quality or feeling. On further analysis, some verbs may have agents while some do not have and some verbs may be changing or unchanging. There are also some verbs which may involve duration while some do not and some verbs which may or may not take agent. Such verbs are always in the midway of classification and they make a group o f their own which compel the study to go into a deeper level.


CHAPTER I. DESCRIPTION OF DIFFERENT APPROACHES
1.1. Syntactic alternations and verb semantic classes
In her book, B. Levin shows, for a large set of English verbs (about 3200), the correlations between the semantics of verbs and their syntactic behavior. More precisely, she shows that some facets of the semantics of verbs have strong correlations with the syntactic behavior of these verbs and with the interpretation of their arguments.
She first precisely delimits the different forms of verb syntactic behavior. Each of these forms is described by one or more alternation (e.g. alternations describe passive forms, there-insertions and reflexive forms). Then, she proposes an analysis of English verbs according to these alternations: each verb is associated with the set of alternations it undergoes. A preliminary investigation showed that there are sufficient correlations between some facets of the semantics of verbs and their syntactic behavior to allow for the formation of classes. ¿From these observations, Beth Levin has then defined about 200 verb semantic classes, where, in each class, verbs share a certain number of alternations.
This very important work emerged from the synthesis of specific investigations on particular sets of verbs (e.g. movement verbs), on specific syntactic behaviors and on various types of information extracted form corpora. Other authors have studied in detail the semantics conveyed by alternations e.g. and the links between them.
The alternation system
An alternation, roughly speaking, describes a change in the realization of the argument structure of a verb. The scope of an alternation is the proposition. Modifiers are considered in some cases, but the main structures remain the arguments and the verb. Arguments may be deleted or `moved', NPs may become PPs or vice-versa, and some PPs may be introduced by a new preposition. Alternations may also be restricted by means of constraints on their arguments.
Beth Levin has defined 79 alternations for English. They basically describe `transformations' from a `basic' form. However, these alternations have a priori little to do with the assumptions of Government and Binding theory and Movement theory, in spite of some similitudes. The form assumed to be basic usually corresponds to the direct realization of the argument structure, although clearly this point of view may be subject to debate. Here are a few, among the most common, types of alternations.
The Transitivity alternations introduce a change in the verb's transitivity. In a number of these alternations the subject NP is deleted and one of the objects becomes the subject, which must ,in English, be realized. The Middle alternation is typical of this change:
John cuts the cake  The cake cuts easily.
As can be noticed, it is often necessary to add an adverb to make the sentence acceptable. The Causative/inchoative alternation concerns a different set of verbs:
Edith broke the window  The window broke.
Verbs undergoing this alternation can roughly be characterized as verbs of change of state or position.
Under transitivity alternations fall also alternations where an object is unexpressed. This is the case for the Unexpressed object alternation where the object1 is not realized. A number of verbs undergo this alternation. In most cases, the `typical' object is `implicit' or `incorporated' into the verb, or deducible from the subject and the verb. This is the case, e.g., for the Characteristic property of agent alternation:
This dog bites people  This dog bites.
We also find alternations that change the object NP into a PP, as in the conative alternation:
Edith cuts the bread  Edith cuts at the bread.
Other sets of alternations include the introduction of oblique complements, reflexives, passives, there-insertion, different forms of inversions and the introduction of specific words such as the way-construction.
It is clear that these alternations are specific to English. They are not universal, even though some are shared by several languages (e.g. the passive alternation). Every language has its own alternation system, and has a more or less important number of alternations. The characteristics of the language, such as case marking, are also an important factor of variation of the form, the status and the number of alternations. English seems to have a quite large number of alternations; this is also the case e.g. for ancient languages such as Greek. French and Romance languages in general have much fewer alternations, their syntax is, in a certain way, more rigid. The number of alternations also depends on the way they are defined, in particular the degree of generality via constraints imposed on context elements is a major factor of variation. Why is a theory of verb meaning important? Verbs name events or states with participants, making them the organizational core of the sentence, so their meaning is key to sentence meaning.
Word meanings in general are difficult to pin down, and verb meanings are no less so. How do we study verb meanings?
ONE STRATEGY: Exploit the link between verb meaning and argument realization.
WHY IS THIS STRATEGY PRODUCTIVE? To the extent that a verb’s meaning appears to determine its argument realization options, looking at verbs with shared or overlapping patterns of argument realization provides a way of isolating linguistically-relevant components of verb meaning.
LIMITATION: illuminates only facets of verb meaning relevant to argument realization.
The argument realization options of new denominal verbs provide support for the foundational assumption that verb meaning determines verb behavior.
A case study of texting and faxing:
a. He texted/faxed the answer.
b. The librarian wanded the barcode.
Double object construction:
a. He texted/faxed me the answer
b. ∗ The librarian wanded me the barcode.
a. text and fax are verbs of information transfer
b. wand is not a verb of information transfer
He mailed/radioed/cabled/telexed/e-mailed me the answer.
• A second case study: nonce verbs derived from names of instruments used for removing
a. The mockingbird pounces, TWEEZERS it [=the cricket] from the grass with a sharp and deadly accurate bill.
b. Carefully he RAZORED the heads off the matches ...
(B. Thoene, Warsaw Requiem, Bethany, Minneapolis, 1991, p. 187)
Compare established verbs of removing, whether denominal or not:
a. He hosed/raked/shovelled/vacuumed the debris off the sidewalk.
b. He scrubbed/swept/washed the debris off the sidewalk.
Compare denominal verbs based on names of devices for attaching:
He nailed/thumbtacked/stapled/pinned the notice to the wall.
Challenges in identifying meaning components
The relevant meaning components may not always be readily identifiable: — there may be several overlapping semantic characterizations; — the correct characterization may not be the most obvious one.
The Italian verbs russare ‘snore’ and arrossire ‘blush’ are both bodily process verbs, yet they select different auxiliaries in Italian:
russare ‘snore’ takes the auxiliary avere arrossire ‘blush’ takes the auxiliary essere
In fact, these verbs are fundamentally different semantically:
russare ‘snore’: activity/process arrossire ‘blush’ (= a + rosso + ire ‘become red’): change of state
AUXILIARY SELECTION:
Activity/process verbs take the auxiliary avere ‘have’
State and change of state verbs take the auxiliary essere ‘be’