From state to change of state by type-shift
Ryan Walter Smith, Jens Hopperdietzel, Andrew Koontz-Garboden
TL;DR
The paper introduces a new linguistic analysis to explain how languages express state and change-of-state meanings without inchoative morphology.
Contribution
It proposes a type-shifting operation called Inchoative Shift combined with a Blocking Principle and structural alternatives.
Findings
The Inchoative Shift explains how inchoative semantics emerge in languages without overt inchoative morphology.
The Blocking Principle accounts for the restricted distribution of change-of-state meanings in labile languages.
Structural alternatives explain why periphrastic inchoative constructions don't always block type-shifting.
Abstract
This paper proposes a type-shifting analysis of state/change-of-state lability (Koontz-Garboden et al. in Verbhood and state/change of state lability across languages, Ms., 2023): in languages with no overt inchoative morphology, a type-shifting operation, which we dub Inchoative Shift, introduces inchoative semantics where type mismatches would otherwise occur. In combination with a Blocking Principle, drawing on Chierchia’s (Natural Language Semantics 6:339–405, 1998) proposal, the analysis explains the restricted distribution of change-of-state meaning in labile languages, and the fact that change-of-state readings of stative predicates are in complementary distribution with inchoative morphology cross-linguistically. Furthermore, once we augment the Blocking Principle with a notion of structural alternatives (Katzir in Linguistics and Philosophy 30:669–690, 2007), we can provide an…
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Taxonomy
TopicsSyntax, Semantics, Linguistic Variation · Linguistic Variation and Morphology · Natural Language Processing Techniques