Next: Resultatives
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I propose a model of the data introduced in this chapter which has the
following characteristics:
- A non-uniform treatment of the range of data.
Constructions with the syntactic configuration
identified in resalt1a are treated differently than those in
the syntactic configuration in resalt1b. Only the latter
fall under the heading Resultatives.
- Syntactic constraints and semantics:
Resultatives derive from fixed constructions.
Following
Goldberg (1995), Resultatives will be licensed by a lexicalised
construction with specific syntactic and semantic characteristics.
- Conventionalisation: certain
instantiations of the Resultative construction will be assumed
to be lexicalised.
Again following Goldberg (1995), this
property seems to be required to account for certain
idiosyncrasies in the range of data allowed.
- Pragmatics: plays an important role in
determining the felicity of an instantation of the Resultative
construction.
As suggested in
Section 4.4.3, and indeed by Goldberg's
(1995) direct-causation restriction (see Section 4.5),
some of the apparent idiosyncrasy of Resultatives can be accounted
for by requiring there to be a natural causal relation between the
event expressed by the main verb and the result state provided by
the resultative phrase.
- Compositionality: non-Resultatives acquire
their meaning through composition.
The constructions in the
syntactic configuration identified in resalt1a will be
assumed to be licensed via the normal process of adjunction and
shown to be interpreted compositionally, given a certain
perspective on the possible behaviour of adjunct phrases (to be
outlined below).
- Sense shifts: verbs of sound emission
receive their motion sense from a lexical rule.