A Modern English Grammar on Historical Principles

Jespersen, Otto

doi:10.4324/9780203715949

Cited by 97 publications

(154 citation statements)

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“…First, as discussed above, late anterior positivity effects are typically produced by words that violate highly lexically constraining contexts (Federmeier et al, 2007), which was not the case here. Second, in the linguistic literature, light verb constructions are usually seen as the special cases, while the full, non-light versions of those verbs are the point of reference (Butt, 2003; Jespersen, 1965). We follow this theoretical assumption by treating the non-light constructions as the baseline condition.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The difference between “giving a rose” and “giving a kiss”: Sustained neural activity to the light verb construction

Wittenberg

Paczynski

Wiese

et al. 2014

Journal of Memory and Language

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We used event-related potentials (ERPs) to investigate the neurocognitive mechanisms associated with processing light verb constructions such as “give a kiss”. These constructions consist of a semantically underspecified light verb (“give”) and an event nominal that contributes most of the meaning and also activates an argument structure of its own (“kiss”). This creates a mismatch between the syntactic constituents and the semantic roles of a sentence. Native speakers read German verb-final sentences that contained light verb constructions (e.g., “Julius gave Anne a kiss”), non-light constructions (e.g., “Julius gave Anne a rose”), and semantically anomalous constructions (e.g., *“Julius gave Anne a conversation”). ERPs were measured at the critical verb, which appeared after all its arguments. Compared to non-light constructions, the light verb constructions evoked a widely distributed, frontally focused, sustained negative-going effect between 500 and 900 ms after verb onset. We interpret this effect as reflecting working memory costs associated with complex semantic processes that establish a shared argument structure in the light verb constructions.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The difference between “giving a rose” and “giving a kiss”: Sustained neural activity to the light verb construction

Wittenberg

Paczynski

Wiese

et al. 2014

Journal of Memory and Language

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“…For example, after having performed a series of psychological experiments, Downing (1977) concluded that no fixed and limited set of relations could adequately characterize noun compound semantics, a position held earlier by Jespersen (1942). For example, after having performed a series of psychological experiments, Downing (1977) concluded that no fixed and limited set of relations could adequately characterize noun compound semantics, a position held earlier by Jespersen (1942).…”

Section: P Nakovmentioning

confidence: 99%

On the interpretation of noun compounds: Syntax, semantics, and entailment

Nakov¹

2013

Nat. Lang. Eng.

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We discuss the problem of interpreting noun compounds such as colon cancer tumor suppressor protein, which pose major challenges for the automatic interpretation of English written text. We present an overview of the more general process of compounding and of noun compounds in particular, as well as of their syntax and semantics from both theoretical and computational linguistics viewpoint with an emphasis on the latter. Our main focus is on computational approaches to the syntax and semantics of noun compounds: we describe the problems, present the challenges, and discuss the most important lines of research. We also show how understanding noun compound syntax and semantics could help solve textual entailment problems, which would be potentially useful for a number of NLP applications, and which we believe to be an important direction for future research.

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“…2 Verbalization (and nominalization for that matter) in this diachronic sense is to be understood as a historical process in which a form gradually acquires verb-like (or, with nominalization, noun-like) characteristics, often combined with the loss of features of its original category (Malchukov 2004:119). The diachronic verbalization of the gerund has thus far mainly been defined in morphosyntactic terms, as earlier studies focused on the lengthy process involving the reconfiguration of the NP structure of the nominal gerund into that of a nonfinite clause (Jespersen 1940;Mustanoja 1960;Visser 1963Visser -1973Emonds 1973;Tajima 1985Tajima , 1996Tajima , 1999Donner 1986;Jack 1988;Houston 1989; Van der Wurff 1993;Fanego 1996aFanego , 1996bFanego , 1998Fanego , 2004Miller 2002;Kranich 2006). In that process, the gerund gradually acquired verbal properties, such as the ability to: a.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

What It Means to Verbalize

Fonteyn

Smet

Heyvaert

2015

Journal of English Linguistics

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The English gerund system consists of two types of gerunds: a nominal gerund (the learning of a language), and a verbal gerund that developed out of the nominal gerund (learning a language). While the formal aspects of this diachronic verbalization of the gerund are well documented, much remains to be said about the discoursefunctional side of the change. In this paper, it is argued that the formal verbalization of the gerund is accompanied by an important change in the discourse-functional organization of the gerund system. Based on functional characterizations of noun phrase (NP) behavior in the literature, the prototypical behavior of complex NPs is operationalized as (i) functioning as manipulable discourse participants that are important enough in the following discourse to be susceptible to anaphoric targeting and (ii) being inaccessible to anaphoric targeting of internal participants. The results of an analysis of a set of nominal gerunds, verbal gerunds and 'regular' complex NPs covering the period 1640-1914 (taken from the Penn Parsed Corpora of Early Modern and Modern British English) shows that the increasingly clause-like appearance of the verbal gerund is in fact accompanied by atypical NP behavior. Moreover, the paper makes clear that the changes in the discourse-functional organization of the gerund system did not only affect the verbal gerund, but also had some implications for the nominal gerund. These findings shed new light on the (diachronic) processes of verbalization and nominalization, and on what they mean on a discourse-functional level.

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A Modern English Grammar on Historical Principles

Cited by 97 publications

References 0 publications

The difference between “giving a rose” and “giving a kiss”: Sustained neural activity to the light verb construction

The difference between “giving a rose” and “giving a kiss”: Sustained neural activity to the light verb construction

On the interpretation of noun compounds: Syntax, semantics, and entailment

What It Means to Verbalize

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