Putting order into literal and figurative uses of verbs: "Romper" as a case study

Abstract

<p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 11.0px Helvetica;">This paper argues in favor of the hypothesis that the so-called figurative and literal<span style="font: 12.0px Helvetica;">&nbsp;</span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 11.0px Helvetica;">meanings of verbs share a common core meaning that constitutes the semantic base<span style="font: 12.0px Helvetica;">&nbsp;</span>of verbs across contexts. I argue for an underspecification model of the lexicon<span style="font: 12.0px Helvetica;">&nbsp;</span>and take the Spanish change of state verb<span style="font: 12.0px Helvetica;"> </span>romper<span style="font: 12.0px Helvetica;"> </span>&lsquo;break&rsquo; as a case study.&nbsp;It is shown that the meaning variation of<span style="font: 12.0px Helvetica;"> </span>romper-VPs is correlated with the semantics of the theme in two ways: 1) whether and how<span style="font: 12.0px Helvetica;">&nbsp;</span>exactly the theme is affected by the change and 2) whether the theme has a simple<span style="font: 12.0px Helvetica;">&nbsp;</span>or a complex mereological structure. I thus analyze<span style="font: 12.0px Helvetica;"> </span>romper<span style="font: 12.0px Helvetica;"> </span>in terms of a simple<span style="font: 12.0px Helvetica;">&nbsp;</span>scalar change, for which the exact dimension of change depends on the properties<span style="font: 12.0px Helvetica;">&nbsp;</span>of the theme argument. The study is taken as precursor for the analysis of lexical<span style="font: 12.0px Helvetica;">&nbsp;</span>entailments of change of state verbs in composition and aims at showing that what<span style="font: 12.0px Helvetica;">&nbsp;</span>has often been denominated metaphoric extensions or non-regular polysemy can be<span style="font: 12.0px Helvetica;">&nbsp;</span>analyzed alike through an underspecification approach. The present paper represents<span style="font: 12.0px Helvetica;">&nbsp;</span>a view of lexicon that goes against a trivial and static conception of lexical meaning.</p

Lexical Semantics with Large Language Models: A Case Study of English “break”

“…Levin and Rappaport Hovav, 1995;Alexiadou et al, 2006;Piñón, 2001). Though the debate is still unsettled, it has evinced that participation in the causative alternation is not a property of the verb itself, but of the verb in combination with its theme argument (Petersen, 2020;Spalek, 2012) with telicity and other aspectual properties (Dowty, 1976(Dowty, , 1979Borer, 2005b).…”