John Beavers

Biographic Data

ID6111666
NAMEJohn Beavers
GIVEN NAMESJohn
FAMILY NAMEBeavers
SIGNATUREBEAVERS J
AFFILIATIONSThe University of Texas at Austin
ORCID0009-0004-7922-0117
VERIFIEDYes
TOTAL WORKS27
TOTAL CITATIONS123
WORKS AS AUTHOR26
WORKS AS EDITOR1
FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR2006
LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR2026
H-INDEX6

  • The role of root semantics in determining argument alternations

    Open AccessJohn Beaver, John Beavers et al.ARTICLENatural Language and Linguistic…2026

    Argument alternations are an empirical mainstay in studying the building blocks of verb meaning and how such meanings link to a verb’s grammatical properties. Event structures are widely adopted for exploring these questions, where a verb’s meaning is decomposed into an event template (defining grammatically coherent verb classes) and a root (filling in idiosyncratic verb-by-verb details). An alternation is analyzed as one root occurring in two t…

  • The Editors’ Report

    Open AccessJohn Beaver, John Beavers et al.ARTICLELanguage2026

    An abstract is not available for this content. As you have access to this content, full HTML content is provided on this page. A PDF of this content is also available in through the ‘Save PDF’ action button

  • The Editors’ Report

    Open AccessJohn Beaver, John Beavers et al.ARTICLELanguage2025

  • Commentary

    Open AccessJohn Beaver, John BeaversARTICLELanguage2025References: 42

    A few days ago I found myself back at my old alma mater, Stanford University, to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of the Department of Linguistics. Much was familiar to me since I left nineteen years ago—the building, the offices, a few of the faculty, the random musical equipment lying around—but there were some changes. The most notable was in the first floor break room: the built-in bookshelves that had long stood at the end …

  • Gary R. Habermas, On the Resurrection

    Open AccessJohn BeaversARTICLEAnglican Theological Review2024

  • Language

    John BeaversEDITORARTICLELanguage2024

  • The Editors' Report

    Open AccessJohn Beavers, Shelome GoodenARTICLELanguage2024

    The Editors' Report John Beavers, Editor and Shelome Gooden, Co-Editor [The following is a modified and updated version of the report made to the LSA at the annual business meeting, on January 6th, 2024.] 1. Introduction The year 2023 was another successful one for Language. We saw submissions up considerably from the previous year, with an increasing diversity in the areas of submission. All four issues were published on time, for a total number…

  • Middle voice as generalized argument suppression

    Open AccessJohn Beaver, John Beavers et al.ARTICLENatural Language and Linguistic…2023Cited by: 1References: 80

  • The Editors' Report

    Open AccessJohn Beavers, Andries W Coetzee et al.ARTICLELanguage2023

    The Editors’ Report John Beavers, Editor, Andries W. Coetzee, Editor (2017–2022), and Shelome Gooden, Co-Editor [The following is a modified and updated version of the report made to the LSA at the annual business meeting, on January 7th, 2023.] 1. Continuing impact of the COVID-19 pandemic Although we still saw some impact of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2022, we were able to publish all four issues for the year on time. This is in no small part due…

  • The Editors' Report

    Open AccessAndries W Coetzee, John Beaver et al.ARTICLELanguage2022

    The Editors' Report Andries W. Coetzee and John Beavers [The following is a modified and updated version of the report made to the LSA membership at the annual business meeting, on January 7, 2022.] 1. Impact of COVID-19 on language Although operations at Language continue to be impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic, we were able to publish all four issues for 2021 on time, and we are also on track to publish all four issues of 2022 on time. This is …

  • States and changes-of-state

    John Beaver, John Beavers et al.ARTICLELanguage2021

    What are the basic building blocks of verb meanings, how are they composed into more complex meanings, and how does this explain the grammatical properties of verbs and their relationships to other words with related meanings? These questions are fundamental to the study of verb meaning, and some of the most fruitful attempts to answer them have come from event-structural theories, wherein verb meanings are assumed to be decomposed into an event …

  • States and changes of state

    John Beaver, John Beavers et al.ARTICLELanguage2021

    [Download PDF file] Supplemental materials on alternative statistical treatments This PDF file outlines the alternative statistical treatments to those applied to the typological data set in the main article. This includes the same statistical tests as used in the article but including hypotheticalized data points, as well as Monte Carlo simulations for those tests with and without hypotheticals to show that the procedure of randomly selecting sy…

  • The Editors' Report

    Open AccessAndries W Coetzee, John Beaver et al.ARTICLELanguage2021

    The Editors' Report Andries W. Coetzee, Editor and John Beavers, Co-Editor [The following is a slightly modified and updated version of the report made verbally to the LSA membership at the virtual annual meeting, on January 4, 2021.] In spite of the disruption caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, 2020 was another successful year at Language, during which we maintained a good submission record and a good time-to-decision. It was also a time of transi…

  • What Makes a Paper Appropriate for Language

    Open AccessAndries W Coetzee, John Beaver et al.ARTICLELanguage2021Cited by: 1

  • States and changes of state

    Open AccessJohn Beaver, John Beavers et al.ARTICLELanguage2021Cited by: 7

    What are the basic building blocks of verb meanings, how are they composed into more complex meanings, and how does this explain the grammatical properties of verbs and their relationships to other words with related meanings? These questions are fundamental to the study of verb meaning, and some of the most fruitful attempts to answer them have come from event-structural theories, wherein verb meanings are assumed to be decomposed into an event …

  • Intentionality, scalar change, and non-culmination in Korean caused change-of-state predicates

    Open AccessJohn Beaver, John Beavers et al.ARTICLELinguistics2020Cited by: 3References: 52

    This paper investigates the interpretations of caused change-of-state predicates in Korean, and in particular non-culmination readings in which the result state inherent to the meaning of the predicate fails to obtain either fully (zero result) or partially. We argue that zero result readings require that the subject intended the coming about of the result state, while readings in which some result obtains (partially or completely) lack this enta…

  • TheSpray/LoadAlternation

    Open AccessJohn Beaver, John BeaversOTHERThe Wiley Blackwell Companion to…2017Cited by: 1References: 4

    In the English spray/load diathesis alternation (also sometimes known as the "locative alternation") causative verbs with meanings in which some locatum is moved into or onto some location allow either non-causer argument to be realized as the object, with the other argument realized as an oblique (e.g., John sprayed the paint on the wall vs. John sprayed the wall with the paint ). For several decades this alternation has been a significant, cros…

  • Result verbs, scalar change, and the typology of motion verbs

    Open AccessJohn Beaver, John Beavers et al.ARTICLELanguage2017Cited by: 6

    In this article we consider the nature of ‘result verbs’, typically defined as verbs describing scalar changes, which have played a significant role in the literature on verb typologies, event structures, and theories of (im)possible word meanings. We argue that the entailment of scalar change and the entailment of a new result state should not be wholly conflated. Rather, various previously proposed diagnostics for scalar change actually pick ou…

  • Anticausatives in Sinhala

    Open AccessJohn Beaver, John Beavers et al.ARTICLENatural Language and Linguistic…2013Cited by: 7References: 40

  • Aspectual classes and scales of change

    Open AccessJohn Beaver, John BeaversARTICLELinguistics2013Cited by: 6

    Standard models of aspectual classes focus on event decompositional or featural distinctions. However, such classifications often over- or under-generate, and do not necessarily capture the temporal properties aspectual classifications are based on. I develop a predictive model of aspectual classes based on theories of scalar change, taking two independently motivated properties of scales as key: (a) how specific the predicate is about the theme'…

  • Manner and Result in the Roots of Verbal Meaning

    John Beaver, John Beavers et al.ARTICLELinguistic Inquiry2012Cited by: 12References: 60

    Rappaport Hovav and Levin (2010) argue that verbs fall into (at least) two classes: result verbs (e.g., break) and manner verbs (e.g., run). No verb encodes both manner and result simultaneously, a truth-conditional fact that Rappaport Hovav and Levin argue follows from how verb meanings are composed at the level of event structure. However, a key issue in verifying this claim is isolating truth-conditional diagnostics for manner and result. We d…

  • On affectedness

    Open AccessJohn Beaver, John BeaversARTICLENatural Language and Linguistic…2011Cited by: 21References: 43

  • The structure of lexical meaning

    Open AccessJohn Beaver, John BeaversARTICLELanguage2010Cited by: 7

    This article explores the architecture of the interface between morphosyntax and lexical semantics, in particular the semantic underpinnings of argument realization. Many theories of lexical meaning assume that argument realization is derived from underlying event structure: the relative prominence of coarguments in a clause follows from their relative semantic prominence in how the event unfolds. I show that event structure is not sufficient to …

  • The typology of motion expressions revisited

    Open AccessJohn Beaver, John Beavers et al.ARTICLEJournal of Linguistics2009Cited by: 44References: 12

    This paper provides a new perspective on the options available to languages for encoding directed motion events. Talmy (2000) introduces an influential two-way typology, proposing that languages adopt either verb- or satellite-framed encoding of motion events. This typology is augmented by Slobin (2004b) and Zlatev & Yangklang (2004) with a third class of equipollently-framed languages. We propose that the observed options can instead be attribut…

  • On the nature of goal marking and delimitation

    Open AccessJohn Beaver, John BeaversARTICLEJournal of Linguistics2008Cited by: 5References: 3

    This paper investigates two ways goals of motion events can be expressed in so-called ‘verb-framed’ languages (Talmy 2000), focusing on the Japanese postpositions - made and - ni . It is typically assumed that these postpositions are both goal-markers, but differ in the exact goal semantics they encode, giving rise to non-overlapping distributions. Based on a range of distributional differences, I argue instead that they are more radically distin…