John Benjamins Publishing Company
Manner of motion and semantic transitivity
Abstract
Based on a corpus of the major Old High German texts and a corpus of contemporary German newspapers, the paper shows that the German auxiliary system is characterised by both continuity and change. While transitivity proves to be a stable predictor of haben selection throughout German language history, auxiliary selection of intransitive verbs has been partly reorganised. At the expense of telicity, the sein perfect became productive within the intransitive group of manner of motion verbs. This reorganisation of the distributional contexts will be explained in terms of entrenchment. Based on several highly frequent motion verbs such as gehen ‘go’, an abstract schema has evolved which systematically connects manner of motion semantics and sein selection. However, semantic transitivity proves to be an antagonist to this recently entrenched manner of motion schema. Highly transitive manner of motion verbs disallow sein selection. The incidence of the haben perfect rises with increasing transitivity. Here, the patienthood of the direct object turns out to be crucial, with individuation being particularly important.
Abstract
Based on a corpus of the major Old High German texts and a corpus of contemporary German newspapers, the paper shows that the German auxiliary system is characterised by both continuity and change. While transitivity proves to be a stable predictor of haben selection throughout German language history, auxiliary selection of intransitive verbs has been partly reorganised. At the expense of telicity, the sein perfect became productive within the intransitive group of manner of motion verbs. This reorganisation of the distributional contexts will be explained in terms of entrenchment. Based on several highly frequent motion verbs such as gehen ‘go’, an abstract schema has evolved which systematically connects manner of motion semantics and sein selection. However, semantic transitivity proves to be an antagonist to this recently entrenched manner of motion schema. Highly transitive manner of motion verbs disallow sein selection. The incidence of the haben perfect rises with increasing transitivity. Here, the patienthood of the direct object turns out to be crucial, with individuation being particularly important.
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Introduction 1
- Plural inflection in North Sea Germanic languages 17
- Frequency as a key to language change and reorganisation 57
- The history of the mixed inflection of German masculine and neuter nouns 93
- Ablaut reorganisation 149
- Reorganising voice in the history of Greek 175
- Making sense of grammatical variation in Norwegian 209
- Manner of motion and semantic transitivity 231
- Active and passive tough -infinitives 269
- Genesis and diachronic persistence of overabundance 119
- Index 297
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Introduction 1
- Plural inflection in North Sea Germanic languages 17
- Frequency as a key to language change and reorganisation 57
- The history of the mixed inflection of German masculine and neuter nouns 93
- Ablaut reorganisation 149
- Reorganising voice in the history of Greek 175
- Making sense of grammatical variation in Norwegian 209
- Manner of motion and semantic transitivity 231
- Active and passive tough -infinitives 269
- Genesis and diachronic persistence of overabundance 119
- Index 297
