This book focuses on the linguistic representation of temporality in the verbal domain and its interaction with the syntax and semantics of verbs, arguments, and modifiers. Leading scholars explore the division of labour between syntax, compositional semantics, and lexical semantics in the encoding of event structure, encompassing event participants and the temporal properties associated with events. They examine the interface between event structure and the systems with which it interacts, including the interface between event structure and the syntactic realization of arguments and modifiers. Deploying a variety of frameworks and theoretical perspectives they consider central issues and questions in the field, among them whether argument-structure is specified in the lexical entries of verbs or syntactically constructed so that syntactic position determines thematic status; whether the hierarchical structure evidenced in argument structure find parallels in sign language.
Features
Cutting-edge research on a subject of great current interest
Theoretically coherent
Focuses on key issues at the syntax-semantics interface
Suitable for use in graduate courses
Table of Contents
1. Introduction
Part I Lexical Representation
2. Reflections on Manner/Result Complementarity
3. Verbs, Constructions, and Semantic Frames
4. Contact and Other Results
5. The Lexical Encoding of Idioms
Part II Argument Structure and the Compositional Construction of Predicates
6. The Emergence of Argument Structure in Two New Sign Languages
7. Animacy in Blackfoot: Implications for Event Structure and Clause Structure
8. Lexicon Versus Syntax: Evidence from Morphological Causatives
9. On the Morphosyntax of (Anti)Causative Verbs
10. Saturated Adjectives, Reified Properties
Part III Syntactic and Semantic Composition of Event Structure
11. Incremental homegeneity and the Semantics of Aspectual for-Phrases
12. Event Measurement and Containment
13. Morphological Aspect and the Function and Distribution of Cognate Objects Across Languages
14. Locales
15. Modal and Temporal Aspects of Habituality
References
Index
