Mapping out‐ argument structure

Abstract

This article explores a phenomenon of English in which out-combines with a predicate to form a complex predicate (e.g., outsing, outdo, outrun, outsmart, … ), here called "out-pred." A thorough investigation uncovers several new generalizations, which can be summarized as follows. (i) Out-pred formation is productive and syntactic, building upon the structure for the pred. (ii)Out-is the core of the out-pred clause's extended verbal projection. These findings are derived via an analysis in which out-merges with the pred before any argument(s) can merge. This analysis is then further supported by exploring domains in which out-pred is unavailable; though these are seemingly unrelated, they share deep derivational properties that are incompatible with the derivation of out-pred. The findings of this article have implications for the syntactic representation of argument structure more generally, supporting analyses where all arguments of a verb are syntactically severed from it.

Modeling locative prefix semantics. A formal account of the English verbal prefix out-

“…Building on Kotowski (2021), the remainder of this section will defend the argument that the construction denotes COMPETITION. Neither a purely comparative approach (e.g., Ahn 2022, Tolskaya 2014, Williams 1992) nor a purely resultative approach (cf. McIntyre 2003) make correct predictions.…”

“…As briefly mentioned at the beginning of Sect. 4.1, and shown far more comprehensively by both Kotowski (2021) and Ahn (2022), comparative out-is highly promiscuous regarding the input it allows. This does not only hold for the syntactic category or aspectual type of the base form, but also for its ontological class more generally.…”

“…The two processes are under-researched to different degrees. The studies that investigate comparative out-(e.g., Kotowski 2021, Ahn 2022, Kotowski and Schäfer 2023, Tolskaya 2014, Irube 1984, McIntyre 2003, Talmy 2000 propose highly divergent analyses, and no satisfactory formal account is available as of yet. In contrast, the by far less productive locative out-verbs are recognized by major reference works (see Bauer et al 2013:ch.16, Marchand 1969; on the productivity of out-verbs, see Schröder 2011), but have, to the best of my knowledge, not been investigated in any depth thus far.…”

A Word-Based Approach to the So-Called Category-Changing Usage of the English Derivational Prefix Out-

“…SeeBauer et al (2013, pp. 343-44, 635),Ahn (2022), andKotowski (2023) for other recent studies that consider outto have the category-changing ability.…”