Transitivity and Change of State Verbs

Bibliographic Data

ID19402371
AuthorsSaundra K Wright (California State University, Chico, corresponding author)
Year2002
Volume28
Issue1
Pages339
Publication date2002-08-14
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueProceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0363-2946 • E-ISSN: 2377-1666
PublisherLinguistic Society of America (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.3765/bls.v28i1.3849
OpenAlexW2513041413
LanguageEN
Citations received7
References cited5

In this paper, I argue that semantic and pragmatic properties—as opposed to syntactic properties—are responsible for the variability found with transitive uses of change of state verbs. In particular, a variety of factors combine together to determine the argument expression options associated with an individual verb. These factors include controllability (the degree to which an event can be externally manipulated), causer type (whether the event is human driven or nonhuman driven), and subject-modification (whether the causer is in a modified or unmodified form). Finally, I argue that it is possible to predict how acceptable a verb sounds in a transitive construction by a statistical model that combines and weights these different factors

Causative · Cognitive psychology · Event structure · Linguistics · Natural language processing · Syntax · Transitive relation · Verb · Computer Science · Linguistics and Discourse Analysis · Mathematics · Natural Language Processing Techniques · Philosophy · Psychology · Syntax, Semantics, Linguistic Variation · Artificial Intelligence

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