Aspectual Roles and the Syntax-Semantics Interface

All work is work in progress. The ideas developed in this work could be (and probably will be) developed further, revised, and expanded. But it was time to write them down and send them out. Some of these ideas about linking had their origins in my 1987 dissertation. However, this work has grown beyond the dissertation in a number of important ways. The most important of these advances lie in, first, articulating aspectual roles as linguistic objects over which lexical semantic phenomena can be stated, and over which linking generalizations are stated; second, recognizing that syntactic phenomena may be classified as to whether or not they are sensitive to the core event of event structure; and third, recognizing the modularity of aspectual and thematic/conceptual structure, and associating that modularity with a difference between language-specific and universal language generalizations. The three chapters of the book are organized around these ideas. I have tried to state these ideas as strong theses. Where they make strong predictions I have meant them to do so, as a probe for future research. I hope that other researchers will take up the challenge to investigate, test and develop these ideas across a wider realm of languages than I --as one person --can do.

Klappentext

This book presents a theory of the interface between lexical semantics and syntax, in which aspect plays a central role. The aspectual properties that figure in the linking between syntax and semantics are expressed through `aspectual roles', assigned by a verb to its arguments. A number of lexical semantic phenomena can be expressed as operations over aspectual roles, and syntactic phenomena can be classified according to whether or not they are sensitive to the presence of aspectual roles. The theory is independent of any particular model of syntax (such as GB or LFG). This theory proposes a modular relationship between aspectual role information, and conceptual or thematic representations of lexical semantic information. Language-specific generalizations about linking are argued to be expressed in thematic or conceptual representations, while universal linking generalizations are expressed in aspectual representations. Consequently, this theory has implications for language acquisition. A number of recent works have treated aspect of lexical semantics or argument structure in their own right, but none have focused on aspect as central in the relation between lexical semantics and syntactic argument structure.

Inhalt
One: Linking Syntactic Argument Positions and Aspectual Roles.- 1.1. Introduction and Theoretical Background.- 1.2. Direct Internal Arguments.- 1.3. Indirect Internal Arguments.- 1.4. External Arguments. The Non-Measuring Constraint on External Arguments.- 1.5. Aspectual Roles.- 1.6. The Aspectual Interface Hypothesis.- Notes.- Two: Event Structure and Aspectual Roles.- 2.1. The Event Nucleus.- 2.2. Syntactic Processes Sensitive to the Event Nucleus.- 2.3. The Special Status of Arguments in Aspectual Structure.- Notes.- Three: Lexical Conceptual Structures and Aspectual Roles.- 3.1. Lexical Conceptual Structure.- 3.2. The Relation Between Lexical Conceptual Structures And Aspectual Roles.- 3.3. Some Phenomena Illustrating the Modularity of Lexical Conceptual Structures and Aspectual Roles.- Notes.- References.- Name Index.- Language Index.