Abstract for Malka Rappaport Hovav's talk

A constraint on the complexity of verb meaning
Malka Rappaport Hovav (Jerusalem)
September 5, 2006 (Tuesday)
6:30 PM - ; Room 7102, The CUNY Graduate Center

I explore the nature of an observed complementary distribution between manner and result meaning components in verbs, which I attribute to a constraint on the complexity of verb meaning. If verb meanings are represented as sets of lexical entailments on arguments, certain sets of entailments are said to be in complementary distribution. Crucially, the constraint cannot be formulated in terms of number of entailments associated with a verb, on which there does not appear to be a limit. Since this claim can be substantiated only if explicit criteria are given for these meaning components, much of the talk is devoted to understanding the nature of manner and result. The complementary distribution is seen both in the domain of change of state verbs and in the domain of motion verbs. I unify the constraint in these two domains by suggesting that the components which are in complementary distribution are scalar and non-scalar changes. Result verbs are associated with an entailment of a scalar change for a particular argument, and manner verbs are those which are associated with a nonscalar change entailment on an argument. No verb appears to lexicalize both scalar and nonscalar changes, though many manner verbs have naturally associated defeasible result implicatures and many result verbs have naturally associated defeasible manner implicatures. I look at potential counterexamples from both the motion domain and the change of state domain and show that, counter to common assumptions about certain verb-types, the result/manner complementarity does indeed hold. The approach gives insight into why manners, defined as in this way, are so often association with animates, and results, defined in this way, are so often associated with inanimates.