Morpholexical Transparency and the argument structure of verbs of cutting and breaking

Jürgen Bohnemeyer

doi:10.1515/COG.2007.006

Article

Morpholexical Transparency and the argument structure of verbs of cutting and breaking

Jürgen Bohnemeyer

Published/Copyright: September 25, 2007

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From the journal Volume 18 Issue 2

Abstract

Guerssel et al.'s (1985) generalizations regarding the argument structure of verbs of cutting and breaking (C&B, hereafter) are reanalyzed based on the principles of Morpholexical Transparency and Complete Linking. A working hypothesis according to which the C&B domain is universally exhaustively partitioned into argument structure classes of C&B verbs is proposed and tested against a corpus of data from 17 languages. Counterevidence to the hypothesis includes bipolar verbs that are semantically specific both on the state change and its cause and a language that lacks cut verbs, framing severance as state change. The survey suggests that universals of argument structure include the principles of Morpholexical Transparency and Complete Linking, but not specific verb classes.

Keywords: cut and break; separation events; argument structure; verb semantics; lexicon-syntax interface; typology

*Author's contact information: Department of Linguistics, University at Buffalo—SUNY, 609 Baldy Hall, Buffalo, NY 14260, USA

Received: 2005-05-07

Revised: 2006-11-04

Published Online: 2007-09-25

Published in Print: 2007-09-19

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Articles in the same Issue

https://doi.org/10.1515/COG.2007.006

Keywords for this article

cut and break; separation events; argument structure; verb semantics; lexicon-syntax interface; typology