Heidi Harley
University of Arizona
Department of Linguistics

Maryland Linguistics Colloquium

Thursday, December 7, 2001
12:30pm
Room 0303, Math Building
University of Maryland, College Park


How do verbs get their names?
The aktionsart of denominal verbs
and the ontology of verb roots in English


In this talk I first distinguish between two different types of "Measuring-Out" VP structures: verbs of creation and destruction on the one hand, and verbs of change-of-state on the other. I argue that in Hale and Keyser's "lexical syntax" framework, these two types of measuring-out correspond to two different types of conflation structures. I show that these measuring-out effects are detectable in denominal verbs in English, and conclude that the Hale and Keyser-style approach allows a unified account of such effects in both denominal verbs and non-conflated VP structures, assuming that boundedness is an inherent property of Roots. Time permitting, I will discuss the difference in structure between instrumental denominal verbs and location/locatum denominal verbs in English, and contrast English lexical-syntactic
processes with those of the Romance languages.


If you are interested in meeting with the speaker, please contact Nina Kazanina or Scott Fults.



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