Light Verbs Constructions (LVCs) have been a highly debated issue since Jespersen’s (1954) definition. More recently, a formally similar pattern has emerged in literature, that of Light Verb Extensions (LVEs). Like LVCs, they stem from the combination between a V and an eventive N; unlike LVCs, they make use of fully lexical predicates that, under certain syntagmatic conditions, are turned into mere aspectual devices (i.e. to embrace in to embrace an emotion; to breed in to breed resentment; to close in to close a relationship). However interesting, the study of LVEs is limited to a bunch of contributions in French (Gross, 1981), and Italian (D’Agostino, 1995; D’Agostino – Elia, 1998; Cicalese, 1999; Mastrofini, 2005; Jezek, 2011); no work has been carried out so far in English. The aim of this work is to analyze English LVEs, and to account for this phenomenon both from a syntactic and a semantic viewpoint. Using Pustejovsky’s (1995) The Generative lexicon as an analytic tool, I classified 104 LVEs, retrieved from the CoCa Corpus of Contemporary English, according to the different aspectual-semantic configuration licensed by the pattern (i.e. inchoative: to adopt an idea; continuative: to cultivate a feeling; telic: to deliver a performance). I then constructed and submitted to 36 native speakers of American English three typologies of tests, in order to verify how LVEs are perceived and used in real communicative contexts. My results show that the bleaching of the predicate (that is, the loss of semantic power shown by the lexical verb when entering the pattern) is licensed at a syntagmatic level by virtue of a Type Coercion (Pustejovsky, 1995) which re-defines the Argument and Qualia Structure underlying the construction as a whole.
Le estensioni di verbo supporto in inglese: teoria e applicazione
Mastrofini R.
2019
Abstract
Light Verbs Constructions (LVCs) have been a highly debated issue since Jespersen’s (1954) definition. More recently, a formally similar pattern has emerged in literature, that of Light Verb Extensions (LVEs). Like LVCs, they stem from the combination between a V and an eventive N; unlike LVCs, they make use of fully lexical predicates that, under certain syntagmatic conditions, are turned into mere aspectual devices (i.e. to embrace in to embrace an emotion; to breed in to breed resentment; to close in to close a relationship). However interesting, the study of LVEs is limited to a bunch of contributions in French (Gross, 1981), and Italian (D’Agostino, 1995; D’Agostino – Elia, 1998; Cicalese, 1999; Mastrofini, 2005; Jezek, 2011); no work has been carried out so far in English. The aim of this work is to analyze English LVEs, and to account for this phenomenon both from a syntactic and a semantic viewpoint. Using Pustejovsky’s (1995) The Generative lexicon as an analytic tool, I classified 104 LVEs, retrieved from the CoCa Corpus of Contemporary English, according to the different aspectual-semantic configuration licensed by the pattern (i.e. inchoative: to adopt an idea; continuative: to cultivate a feeling; telic: to deliver a performance). I then constructed and submitted to 36 native speakers of American English three typologies of tests, in order to verify how LVEs are perceived and used in real communicative contexts. My results show that the bleaching of the predicate (that is, the loss of semantic power shown by the lexical verb when entering the pattern) is licensed at a syntagmatic level by virtue of a Type Coercion (Pustejovsky, 1995) which re-defines the Argument and Qualia Structure underlying the construction as a whole.I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
