Addressing Template Composition and Parametric Features of Aspect and Modality in Ontological Semantic Acquisition of Phrasal Verbs

Abstract

The article uses the theory of ontological semantics to propose methodological and practical solutions for the acquisition process of selected phrasal verbs. The Knowledge Base Acquisition Editor (KBAE) is adopted as a software for project implementation. Since in ontological semantics, each lexical unit is to be described in terms of its syntactic and semantic structure, the article provides an analysis of both components of representation. At the syntactic level, the pre-established seed templates are adjusted so as to avoid misleading interpretations and to account for causative constructions. At the semantic level, focus is placed on the application of the ontological parametric features of aspect and modality in the meaning representation of phrasal verbs. It is argued that the categories of aspect and modality help grasp the difference between the PV in question and its one-word counterpart. It is believed that the findings of the present study may have further research implications: first, an assessment of the frequency of causative constructions could help finalise the issue of Template 1, which has been found to be misleading. Second, a study of PVs conveying metaphorically extended meanings, which oftentimes turn out to be deducible, could foreground the feature of universality in languages. It could therefore be desirable to establish core PVs, the non-compositional meanings of which would pertain to the domain of cross-linguistically interpretable metaphoricity .