Reflections on Noun-to-Verb Conversion In English

Abstract

English denominal verbs formed by conversion adopt complex morphosyntactic and semantic information in a rather mysterious way. For example, the lexical item bottle is unambiguously interpreted as a referential expression in a sentence like John bought a bottle of wine, but how do we account for the event-reading of the same lexical item in a sentence like John bottled the wine? In this study it will be argued that the lexical information of converted denominal verbs is not provided by an unspecified zero-affix, but by conceptual qualia structures, i. e. by modes of explanation, and that these make explicit the implicit knowledge speakers of English have about the referents of nominal bases and determine the interpretation and formation of the corresponding verbs. Moreover, qualia structures yield not only the basic meanings of denominal verbs, but also allow for context-dependent interpretations, which are a result of coercion (e. g. John bottled the spectators). A mapping relation between qualia structures and argument structures, the latter of which are part of the lexical representation of the denominal verbs, will be established by meaning postulates.* I would like to thank Gisa Rauh, Thilo Tappe, Stefan Engelberg, Colin Foskett, PatrickDeegan, the participants of the linguistic colloquium held at the University of Wuppertal and two anonymous reviewers for helpful comments on this study. Remaining mistakes are however my responsibility. I am particularly indebted to the Fritz Thyssen Stiftung (Cologne), whose financial support enabled me to complete the work on this study, which is part of the project on "Word-Formation and the Lexicon" supervised by Gisa Rauh.

What’s Dog Got to Do With It? Motivation Behind Denominal (Animal) Verbs

“…By the same token, doubt is cast on the veracity of derivational accounts of denominal conversion, in which denominal verbs are considered a function of the semantic properties of their source nominals (e.g. Baeskow, 2006;Kiparsky, 1997). This perspective is foundational for most existing accounts of denominal animal verbs (surveyed in 2.1), which uniformly interpret metaphorical animal verbs as a metaphorical function of the denotation of animal nouns or, taking a broader perspective, animal ICMs, purportedly activated by animal nouns.…”

Noun2Verb: Probabilistic Frame Semantics for Word Class Conversion

“…Previous linguistic studies also suggest that the lexical information in converted denominal verbs can be inferred from the listeners' knowledge about the intended referent of nominal bases (Baeskow 2006). It is therefore natural to connect noun-toverb conversion to the linguistic phenomenon of logical metonymy, where language users need to infer missing predicates from certain syntactic constructions (e.g., an easy book means a book that is easy to read) (Pustejovsky 1991).…”

Experiencing the Conceptual Wealth of Non‐Derived Denominal Verbs: A Multi‐Level, Simulation‐Based Approach*

“…As shown by Joh (2001) and Baeskow (2006) for English and by Fabrizio (2013) for Italian, general knowledge as to the base nouns of DNVs is optimally described in the form of Pustejovsky's (1996) qualia structures, which define a concept with respect to its distinctive properties ( Formal ), its composition ( Constitutive ), its function ( Telic ), and its coming into existence ( Agentive ). These four modes of explanation allow us to access different ‘aspects’ (i.e.…”