Overview of Lexical Semantics of Verbs

Overview of Lexical Semantics of Verbs

Lori Levin

December 1, 2003

What is Lexical Semantics?

• Lexical semantics is about the meanings of words.• It is not about sentence-level meaning:

– Truth conditions of sentences

– How meanings noun phrases and verb phrases are combined compositionally to make meanings of sentences

– Quantifier scope

– Etc.

Aspects of lexical semantics not covered in this lecture

• Nouns, adjectives, adverbs, and prepositions

• Selectional restrictions:– Colorless green ideas sleep furiously

• Count and mass nouns:– There was water all over the driveway.– There was dog all over the driveway.

Outline

• Transitivity alternations and semantic classes of verbs

• Lexical aspect

• Lexical conflation

• How universal is lexical semantics?

• Unaccusative verbs (non-agentive subjects)

• Survey of computational lexicon projects

Transitivity Alternations

• Transitivity – does the verb have a direct object or not.

• Transitivity alternations:– Broader meaning – Changes in the number of arguments a verb has– Changes in the grammatical relations of

arguments

English Transitivity Alternations

• Beth Levin, 1993– Identified around 100 transitivity alternations in

English.

Transitivity Alternations and Semantic Classes: Examples

• Causative-Inchoative: change of state verbs– Sam broke the glass. (causative)– The glass broke. (inchoative)– Sam opened the door.– The door opened.– Sam kicked the ball.– *The ball kicked.

• In other languages– Inchoative verbs may be reflexive (e.g., Romance languages)– There may be a causative marker on the transitive verb.

• Inchoative means beginning. – Beginning a change of state?

Transitivity Alternations and Semantic Classes: Examples

• Dative Shift: giving and telling– I gave Sam the book.– I gave the book to Sam.– I told the story to the children.– I told the children the story.– I drove the car to New York.– *I drove New York the car.

• In other languages– The goal may not be able to become a direct object. (Romance

languages)– The goal may become a direct object in the presence of an

applicative morpheme. (Bantu languages)

Transitivity Alternations and Semantic Classes: Examples

• Spray-Load Alternation: filling and covering.– Sam sprayed the wall with paint.– Sam sprayed paint on the wall.– Sam loaded the truck with hay.– Sam loaded hay onto the truck.

Transitivity Alternations and Semantic Classes: Examples

• There Insertion: stative, appearing– Problems exist.

– There exist problems.

– A ghost appeared.

– There appeared a ghost.

– The students worked.

– *There worked some students.

– The students disappeared.

– *There disappeared some students.

Transitivity Alternations and Semantic Classes: Examples

• Locative subjects:– Bees swarmed in the garden.– The garden swarmed with bees.

• Temporal subjects:– 1990 saw the fall of the government.

Transitivity Alternations and Semantic Classes: Examples

• Middle: Telic verbs? (see below)– You can cut this bread.– This bread cuts easily.– You can sell these books easily.– These books sell well.– People like these books.– *These books like well.

Transitivity Alternations and Semantic Classes: Examples

• Resultative Secondary Predication: theme version– Sam hammered the nail.– Sam hammered the nail flat.– The lake froze.– The lake froze solid.

Transitivity Alternations and Semantic Classes: Examples

• Resultative Secondary Predication: agent version– He screamed himself hoarse.– He cried himself to sleep.

Class shifts

• Manner of motion to change of location:– The bottle floated.– The bottle floated into the cave.– The ball bounced.– The ball bounced across the room.

• Sound to change of location:– The car rumbled.– The car rumbled down the street.– The dress rustled.– She rustled across the room.

How universal?

• How universal is argument structure?– If an English word has an agent and a patient, will

the translation-equivalent in another language have an agent and patient?

– If an English word has a subject and object, will the translation-equivalent in another language have a subject and object?

• Less likely: – I met him.

– I met with him.

How Universal?

• How universal are alternations and semantic classes?– If an English word undergoes a transitivity

alternation, will the translation equivalent in another language undergo the same transitivity alternation?

• Even less likely. (Mitamura, 1989)

Importance of Transitivity Alternations in Language Technologies

• For any task that requires understanding (question answering, information extraction, machine translation) you need to know the semantic roles of the NPs.– The glass broke. (subject is patient)– The kids ate. (subject is agent)– I gave them some books (object is recipient)

Importance of Transitivity Alternations in Language Technologies

• So you need multiple lexical mappings for each verb:

break < agent patient> subj obj break < patient > subj give < agent theme recipient> subj obj obl give < agent theme recipient> subj obj2 obj

Importance of Transitivity Alternations in Language Technologies

• To speed up lexicon acquisition, assigning a verb to a semantic class and automatically generating its alternations is faster than listing all of its lexical mappings by hand.– I gave books to the students.– I gave the students books.– Books were given to the students.– The students were given books.– There were books given to the students.– There were students given books.

Lexical Aspect

• State– The clock sat on the shelf.

• Activity– The children painted.

• Accomplishment– The children walked to school.

• Achievement– The ambassador arrived in Moscow.

Lexical Aspect

• Took examples from this web page: http://www.sfu.ca/person/dearmond/322/322.event.class.htm

• Vendler, Linguistics in Philosophy, 1967• Dowty, Word Meaning and Montague Grammar,

1979• Tenny, Aspectual Roles and the Syntax-Semantics

Interface, 1994

Activities and Accomplishments• Activity:

– The children painted for an hour.

– ?The children painted in an hour.

– The children will paint in an hour.• They will start in an hour.

– The children almost painted. • Almost started painting

– Test for telicity: • If you start to paint and stop,

you have painted.• Fails test for telicity.

• Accomplishment:– ?The children walked to school for

an hour.– The children walked to school in

an hour.– The children will walk to school in

an hour.• They will start in an hour, or

it will take an hour.– The children almost walked to

school.• Almost started walking, or

almost reached school– Test for telicity:

• If you start to walk to school and stop, you may not have walked to school.

• Passes test for telicity.

Telicity

• Telic: has a goal or endpoint (accomplishment)

• Atelic: does not have a goal or endpoint (activity)

• Telicity can change depending on the sentence:– He built houses for a year/*in a year.– He built a house in a year/?for a year.

Achievements

• The ambassador almost arrived in Moscow.– Only means “almost finished” not “almost

started.”

States (English)

• Stative: Simple present tense means present time. Present progressive does not sound good.– He knows the answer.

– He is knowing the answer.

• Non-stative: Simple present tense means habitual or generic. Present progressive means present time.– He paints.

– He is painting.

Consequences of Lexical Aspect for Language Technologies

• English– You have to know the lexical aspect of the verb in

order to know what the tense morphemes mean. • The simple present tense means “habitual” with a non-stative

verb, but means present time with a stative verb.

– You have to know the lexical aspect of the verb in order to know what the adverbials mean.

• Almost can mean “almost started,” “almost finished,” or both.

Consequences of Telicity

– Japanese:• Telic verbs with –te iru have a resultative

meaning– Aite iru: is open or has been opened, not is

opening

– Otite iru: is dropped (is on the floor), not is dropping (unless it takes a very long time to fall, like a leaf falling off of a sky scraper)

• Atelic verbs with –te iru have a progressive meaning

– Tabete iru: is eating, not has eaten

Consequences of Telicity

• Japanese: -te aru (with passive-like meaning) only applies to telic verbs because it focuses on a resulting state. (e.g., wash (arau), but not praise (homeru))

Sara ga aratte aru.Plate subj wash

???Taroo ga homete aru.

Consequences of Telicity: Finnish• Angelica Kratzer, Telicity and the Meaning of Objective Case,

International Round Table ‘The Syntax and Semantics of Aspect’, Universite de Paris, Nov. 2000.

• Telic: direct object can have partitive or accusative case (with a slight difference in meaning): Ammu-i-n karhu-aShoot-past-1sg bear-partI shot at a/the bear

Ammu-i-n karhu-nShoot-past-1sg bear-accI shot the bear

• Atelic: can only have partitive case: despise, admire, envy, love, study, play, listen, pull

Consequences of Telicity: Chinese• Lisa Lai Shen Cheng, Aspects of the Ba-Construction,

Lexicon Project Working Papers 24, Carol Tenny (ed.), MIT, 1988.

Ta ba shu mai le.He BA book sell ASPHe sold the book

• Factors determining grammaticality of the ba-construction: – Aspect markers: occurs with le and zhe, but not with zai and guo.

– Definiteness: The direct object has to be interpretable as definite.

– Telicity of the verb: tui le (pushed) vs. tui dao le (pushed down; push-fall); la le (pull) vs. la dao le (pull down; pull-fall); dai le (bring/carry) vs. dai lai le (bring here; carry-come)

“Ba” and Telicity

*Wǒ bǎ Lǐsì tūi-le. I BA Lisi push-ASP

“I pushed Lisi.”

Wǒ bǎ Lǐsì tūi-dǎo-le. I BA Lisi push-fall ASP

“I pushed Lisi and he fell.”

“Ba” and Telicity

*Tā bǎ Zhāngsān lā-le.

He BA Zhangsan pull-ASP

“He pulled Zhangsan.”

Tā bǎ Zhāngsān lā-dǎo-le.

He BA Zhangsan pull-fall-ASP

“He pulled Zhangsan and Zhangsan fell.”

“Ba” and Telicity

*Tā bǎ dìan-nǎo dài-le. He BA computer bring-ASP “He brought the computer.” (Does this really mean “He carried the computer?”)

Tā bǎ dìan-nǎo dài-lái-le. He BA computer bring-come-ASP “He brought the computer here.”

“Ba” and Telicity

*Tā bǎ fángjīan dǎ-sǎo-le. He BA room hit-sweep-ASP

“He cleaned the room.”

Tā bǎ fángjīan dǎ-sǎo de hěn gānjìng.He BA room hit-sweep DE very clean “He cleaned the room and the result is that the room

is very clean.”

Two kinds of intransitive verbs: subject is agentive or not

Sam worked. agentiveSam fell (by accident). non-agentive• Unaccusative: an intransitive verb whose subject is not

agentive.– Because the noun phrase would have been accusative if the verb were

transitive?

• Unergative: an intransitive verb whose subject is agentive.– Because the noun phrase would have been ergative if the verb were

transitive?

• Confusing terminology by David Perlmutter and Paul Postal.• Highly influential and insightful contribution to linguistic

theory also by David Perlmutter and Paul Postal.

Consequences of Unaccusativity or Agentivity

• English: Resultative secondary predication:

*He screamed hoarse.?He worked to exhaustion. He worked himself to exhaustion It broke to pieces. It froze solid.

Consequences of Unaccusativity or Agentivity: German Impersonal Passive

http://www.wm.edu/CAS/modlang/gasmit/grammar/passive/impspass.htm

Hier wird nicht geparkt.

No parking here.

Im Gang wird nicht geraucht.

No smoking in the corridor.

Es wurde viel getanzt und gesungen.

There was lots of dancing and singing.

Works with agentive verbs only.

Not with break, fall, etc.

Consequences of Unaccusativity: Italian partitive clitics

• http://www.sfu.ca/person/dearmond/405/405.ergative.unaccusative.htmSono passate tre settimane.Are passed three weeksThree weeks have passed.

Ne sono passate tre. Of-them are passed three Three of them have passed. Ne sono arrivati(?) tre. Of-them are arrived three Three of them have arrived.

* Ne hanno telefonato(?) tre. Of-them have phoned three Three of them have arrived.

Importance of unaccusativity• Non agentive subjects, direct object, subjects of

passives:– The water froze solid.– He hammered the nail flat.– The nail was hammered flat.

• Agentive subjects and subjects of active, transitive verbs.– He hammered the nail exhausted.

• Doesn’t mean that he became exhausted as a result of hammering the nail.

– He screamed hoarse.• Doesn’t mean that he became hoarse as a result of screaming.

Importance of Unaccusativity

• Non-agentive subjects behave like direct objects.

• Passive subjects correspond to direct objects of active sentences.

• The Unaccusative Hypothesis (Perlmutter and Postal): Maybe non-agentive subjects are direct objects at some level of representation.

Example of insight from the unaccusative hypothesis

• Why can’t German unaccusative verbs become impersonal passives?

• They are already passive! The non-agentive subject was at some point an object that got promoted.

An additional observation• Theme and patient arguments alternate between being

in subject position and being in object position:– Sam broke the glass.– The glass broke.– Problems exist.– There exist problems.– Many people dwell in this village.– In this village dwell many people.

• Agents do not alternate between being subject and object. They are always subjects in active sentences and obliques in passive sentences.

Accounting for the observation

• Chomsky:– Themes and patients start out in object position

in deep structure. They move up to subject position if it is open.

– Agents originate in subject position.– Movement is in only one direction: up from

object to subject (so that the NP c-commands the place it came from).

Accounting for the observation

• Bresnan– Themes and patients are linked to an

underspecified grammatical function (L. Levin, 1986).

– There can be exactly one subject for each verb.– The underspecified function can fully specified

as subject or object, depending on whether the subject function has already been taken or not.