Article
Licensed
Unlicensed
Requires Authentication
‘Smash it again, Sam’: Verbs of cutting and breaking in Jalonke
-
Friederike Lüpke
Published/Copyright:
September 25, 2007
Abstract
This paper investigates the semantic and syntactic properties of cutting and breaking verbs in Jalonke. Semantic features relevant for these Jalonke verbs are control of the effector over the locus of impact, subcategorization for specific manners/instruments, and the theme being a whole vs. already detached from an entity. The latter distinction is unattested in other languages. Syntactically, the verbs fall into two classes: cut verbs with a transitive argument structure, and break verbs with causative and inchoative argument structure options. The existence of a class of exclusively transitive break verbs, despite the existence of the causative/inchoative alternation in Jalonke, is not expected in recent theories of argument structure.
Keywords: cut and break; separation events; Jalonke; Central Mande; syntax-semantics interface; argument structure; verb semantics
Received: 2004-11-30
Revised: 2006-11-07
Published Online: 2007-09-25
Published in Print: 2007-09-19
© Walter de Gruyter
You are currently not able to access this content.
You are currently not able to access this content.
Articles in the same Issue
- 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
Keywords for this article
cut and break;
separation events;
Jalonke;
Central Mande;
syntax-semantics interface;
argument structure;
verb semantics
Articles in the same Issue
- 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
