Thomas Gamerschlag & Albert Ortmann - The role of functional concepts in the classification of nouns and verbs

In the literature on the semantics of nouns, reference is commonly made to the distinctions between count and mass terms, and between sortal and relational concepts, respectively. According to Löbner (1985) the latter distinction is in fact a tripartite one, and comprises in addition functional concepts, which are to be understood in the formal sense of unambiguously identifying an individual. Crucially, nearly every noun displays considerable polysemy, in that the concept types correspond to uses of nouns rather than to invariant lexical properties. For example, address may be either functional or relational, depending on whether or not we associate people with exactly one domicile. Similarly, blood may be sortal or relational, depending on whether we refer to a substance as such, or as part of an organism.    The oppositions that underlie these concept types are monadic vs. polyadic, and inherently identifiable vs. not inherently identifiable. The former opposition concerns the obligatoriness of a posses sor argument, while the latter concerns the use as a definite description. Combining these oppositions by using the features [?transitive] and [?functional] gives rise to four types, typical ex amples of which are tree, sister (of x), pope, and weight (of x), respectively. Further com bi nation with the count/mass opposition, for which we propose the feature [?structured], duplicates the number of types. In our feature system, each positive feature specification corresponds with semantic complexity: the least marked type [–transitive,–structured, –functional] denotes kinds such as milk, paper which cannot undergo mensuration or counting unless a classifier provides them with the specification [+structured]. Conversely, nouns denoting concepts which are [+transitive, +structured, +functional] are usually highly abstract, and often morphologically derived, or borrowed (length, difference, odour). We thus define an ordering of the concept types in terms of a lattice structure along the dimension of complexity.   We then show how our feature system carries over, mutatis mutandis, to the subclassification of verbs: [+structured] “the verb is dynamic, i.e., it has internal temporal structure” (making use of a feature that occurs under various names in, e.g., Jackendoff 1990, Smith 1991, and Van Valin & La Polla 1997); [+transitive] “the verb has more than one non-oblique argument”; [+functional/dimensional] “the verb encodes a dimension”, by which we understand a function assigning exactly one value to each individual that matches the sortal properties relevant for that dimension. For example, last, as in The movie lasts two hours, assigns the value for temporal duration to its subject. Similarly, sit, as in She sits on the lawn, assigns the value for location, as well as that for posture, to its subject (see Kaufmann 1995). By including the latter feature, which has not been employed in the subclassification of verbs so far, we account for the relevant class distinctions, most notably state/activity, transitivity, unaccusative/unergative, telicity, and stative verbs. Additional evidence for the role of [+functional] is provided on the basis of asymmetries in German verb nominalizations.   Like with nouns, virtually any verb may instantiate more than one class. We discuss those transitions which naturally fall out as polysemy of verb stems (e.g., object deletion, transitivization; metonymy, pragmatically-driven shifts), as opposed to more remote transitions, which require morphological means such as markers for causative, passive and reflexive, as well as verb particles.

References

Jackendoff, Ray (1990) Semantic Structures. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.

Kaufmann, Ingrid (1995) O- and D-Predicates. A Semantic Approach to the
Unaccusative-Unergative Distinction. Journal of Semantics 12, 377-427

Löbner, Sebastian (1985) Definites. Journal of Semantics 4: 279-326.

Smith, Carlota S. (1991) The Parameter of Aspect. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

van Valin, Robert D. and Randy J. LaPolla (1997) Syntax: Structure, Meaning and Function. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.