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Cut and break verbs in Ewe and the causative alternation construction
-
Felix K Ameka
und
James Essegbey
Veröffentlicht/Copyright:
25. September 2007
Abstract
Ewe verbs covering the cutting and breaking domain divide into four morpho-syntactic classes that can be ranked according to agentivity. We demonstrate that the highly non-agentive break verbs participate in the causative-inchoative alternation while the highly agentive cut verbs do not, as expected from Guerssel et al.'s (1985) hypothesis. However, four verbs tso ‘cut with precision’, 
‘cut’, 
‘snap-off’, and dze ‘split’, are used transitively when an instrument is required for the severance to be effected, and intransitively when not. We reject a lexicalist analysis that would postulate polysemy for these verbs and argue for a construction approach.
Keywords: cut and break; separation events; verb semantics; agentivity; causative-inchoative alternation; constructions; Ewe
Received: 2004-12-07
Revised: 2006-07-07
Published Online: 2007-09-25
Published in Print: 2007-09-19
© Walter de Gruyter
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Artikel in diesem Heft
- The semantic categories of cutting and breaking events: A crosslinguistic perspective
- Morpholexical Transparency and the argument structure of verbs of cutting and breaking
- How similar are semantic categories in closely related languages? A comparison of cutting and breaking in four Germanic languages
- Cutting, breaking, and tearing verbs in Hindi and Tamil
- Cut and break verbs in Yélî Dnye, the Papuan language of Rossel Island
- ‘Chop, shred, snap apart’: Verbs of cutting and breaking in Lowland Chontal
- Cut and break verbs in Sranan
- Cut and break verbs in Ewe and the causative alternation construction
- ‘Smash it again, Sam’: Verbs of cutting and breaking in Jalonke
- Describing cutting and breaking events in Kuuk Thaayorre
- ‘He cut-break the rope’: Encoding and categorizing cutting and breaking events in Mandarin
- Lao separation verbs and the logic of linguistic event categorization
- ‘Please open the fish’: Verbs of separation in Tidore, a Papuan language of Eastern Indonesia
- Cutting and breaking verbs in Otomi: An example of lexical specification
- ‘She had just cut/broken off her head’: Cutting and breaking verbs in Tzeltal
- Semantic categories of cutting and breaking: Some final thoughts
Schlagwörter für diesen Artikel
cut and break;
separation events;
verb semantics;
agentivity;
causative-inchoative alternation;
constructions;
Ewe
Artikel in diesem Heft
- The semantic categories of cutting and breaking events: A crosslinguistic perspective
- Morpholexical Transparency and the argument structure of verbs of cutting and breaking
- How similar are semantic categories in closely related languages? A comparison of cutting and breaking in four Germanic languages
- Cutting, breaking, and tearing verbs in Hindi and Tamil
- Cut and break verbs in Yélî Dnye, the Papuan language of Rossel Island
- ‘Chop, shred, snap apart’: Verbs of cutting and breaking in Lowland Chontal
- Cut and break verbs in Sranan
- Cut and break verbs in Ewe and the causative alternation construction
- ‘Smash it again, Sam’: Verbs of cutting and breaking in Jalonke
- Describing cutting and breaking events in Kuuk Thaayorre
- ‘He cut-break the rope’: Encoding and categorizing cutting and breaking events in Mandarin
- Lao separation verbs and the logic of linguistic event categorization
- ‘Please open the fish’: Verbs of separation in Tidore, a Papuan language of Eastern Indonesia
- Cutting and breaking verbs in Otomi: An example of lexical specification
- ‘She had just cut/broken off her head’: Cutting and breaking verbs in Tzeltal
- Semantic categories of cutting and breaking: Some final thoughts
