Directionality in cross-categorial derivations

Grestenberger, Laura; Kastner, Itamar

doi:10.16995/glossa.8710

Cited by 3 publications

(1 citation statement)

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“…Verb-to-noun derivations (i.e., derived nouns) in English are generally incompatible with verbal argument structure (AS) and are simple result nominals rather than argument structure nominal ( Grimshaw, 1990 ; Borer, 2013 ). To test their inability to take arguments, we generated percentages of argument structure of the two forms of ambiguous verbs using the COCA database and applied an AS paraphrase test ( Grestenberger and Kastner, 2022 ). As intended, we found a significant difference between two pairs of words on percentages of AS: [ N visit ] and [ V visit ] [M(SD) = 5.86% (0.07) and 25.80% (0.12), p < 0.000].…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The role of category ambiguity in normal and impaired lexical processing: can you paint without the paint?

Lukic

Krauska

Yoshida

et al. 2023

Front. Hum. Neurosci.

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IntroductionMany words are categorially ambiguous and can be used as a verb (to paint) or as a noun (the paint) due to the presence of unpronounced morphology or “zero morphology”. On this account, the verb “paint” is derived from the noun “paint” through the addition of a silent category-changing morpheme. Past studies have uncovered the syntactic and semantic properties of these categorially ambiguous words, but no research has been conducted on how people process them during normal or impaired lexical processing. Are these two different uses of “paint” processed in the same way? Does this morphosyntactic structure have an effect on online sentence processing?MethodsThis study presents two experiments that investigate the effect of morphosyntactic complexity in categorially ambiguous words presented in isolation (experiment 1) and in a sentential context (experiment 2). The first experiment tested the ability to process categorially unambiguous and ambiguous nouns and verbs in 30 healthy older adults and 12 individuals with aphasia, using a forced choice phrasal-completion task, in which individuals choose whether the or to is most compatible with target words.ResultsHealthy controls and individuals with fluent aphasia all showed: (1) a bias toward the base category in selection rates for the and to, where the was selected more frequently for words identified to be base nouns, and to was selected more frequently for base verbs, and (2) longer reaction times for ambiguous (over unambiguous) words. However, individuals with non-fluent agrammatic aphasia showed a base-category effect only for nouns, with chance performance for verbs. The second experiment, using an eye-tracking while reading paradigm with 56 young healthy adults, showed a reading time slowdown for derived forms (to paint) compared to their base-category counterparts (the paint) in sentence contexts.DiscussionThese findings suggest that categorially ambiguous words likely share a common root, and are related by zero-derivation, and that impaired access to the base-category (i.e., verbs like to visit) precludes associated morphological processes and therefore the retrieval of the derived-category (i.e., nouns like the visit) in non-fluent agrammatic aphasia. This study provides insights into the theory of zero morphology, and the principles that need to be accounted for in models of the lexicon.

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Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The role of category ambiguity in normal and impaired lexical processing: can you paint without the paint?

Lukic

Krauska

Yoshida

et al. 2023

Front. Hum. Neurosci.

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Manner/result polysemy as contextual allosemy: Evidence from Daakaka

Hopperdietzel

2024

Nat Lang Linguist Theory

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Manner/result polysemy describes a phenomenon where a single root can encode both manner and result meaning components of an eventive verbal predicate. It therefore poses a challenge to (i) the hypothesis of manner/result complementarity as a fundamental constraint on verb/root meaning and (ii) a strict one-to-one mapping between roots and meaning. Examining novel data from the Oceanic language Daakaka, I provide further evidence that polysemous verbs like tiwiye ‘press manually, break’ only apparently violate manner/result complementarity, as manner and result meaning components are in complementary distribution. As both meaning components are sensitive to their morphosyntactic environment, I develop an account of contextual root allosemy, in which manner and result interpretations are associated with designated syntactic positions in relative configuration to an event-introducing verbalizer v. In particular, I argue that a single root may be associated with two non-compositional entries in the encyclopaedia, an eventive and a stative one, which allows the root to be merged in either the manner or result position. Independent support comes from suppletive verb forms in the paradigm of polysemous roots in Daakaka, where the spell-out conditions of contextual allomorphy and contextual allosemy overlap. Finally, I discuss theoretical and empirical challenges for alternative accounts of manner/result polysemy, including accounts based on derivation, coercion, and homophony.

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Insights from the Meaning First Approach and cognition into denominal verbs in child language: <em>Cherrying</em> means ‘eating cherries’, not ‘becoming like a cherry’

Bleotu

2023

Glossa: A Journal of General Linguistics

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We experimentally investigate the meaning of denominal verbs in child and adult Romanian using a semi-artificial/semi-nonce denominal verb (SAD) paradigm, i.e., using non-existent verbs derived from familiar nouns (a cireşi ‘to cherry’). Importantly, the SAD paradigm allows us to probe into meaning formation without the lexical bias of existing verbs. To see whether children have difficulties understanding SAD verbs in linguistic contexts, we conducted a Contextual Denominal Task. Children were asked to select a matching picture after hearing sentences with SAD verbs in linguistic contexts biasing them for a particular interpretation. Children generally opted for a literal interpretation of a cireşi ‘to cherry’, involving the actual object cherry (‘to pick/eat cherries’), over a figurative interpretation such as a deveni (roşie) ca cireaşa ‘to become (red) like a cherry’, i.e., ‘to blush’ even in figurative-biasing contexts (like Mary cherried when John told her she was beautiful). In order to see whether children perform better when the meaning is made explicit or whether they have a general difficulty with figurative meanings (whether implicit or explicit), we also conducted an Explicit Denominal Paraphrase Task, where children were instead exposed to the corresponding denominal paraphrases (e.g., a deveni ca cireaşa ‘to become like a cherry’). Children performed almost adult-like when the figurative meaning was more explicit. We account for our findings within a Meaning First Approach (Sauerland & Alexiadou 2020; Guasti, Alexiadou & Sauerland 2023), which assumes that compressed meaning is hard, and that decompressing words is subject to two possible principles: (structural and conceptual) simplicity and plausibility. While adults tend to observe plausibility, children prefer simplicity more, generally opting for literal readings, which merge the light verb DO or similar verbs with nouns (Hale & Keyser 2002; Kiparsky 1997).

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Directionality in cross-categorial derivations

Cited by 3 publications

References 77 publications

The role of category ambiguity in normal and impaired lexical processing: can you paint without the paint?

The role of category ambiguity in normal and impaired lexical processing: can you paint without the paint?

Manner/result polysemy as contextual allosemy: Evidence from Daakaka

Insights from the Meaning First Approach and cognition into denominal verbs in child language: <em>Cherrying</em> means ‘eating cherries’, not ‘becoming like a cherry’

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