Jaume Mateu (Barcelona)   HANDOUT

wird am Donnerstag, den 17.04.2014
um 12:30 – 14:00 Uhr
in 22.01.2C (HHU, Düsseldorf)

im SFB 991-Kolloquium einen Vortrag halten über:

Change of state and the co-event conflation pattern: The case of unselected object constructions

In this talk I deal with the typological variation involved in the realm of verbal argument structure in the light of a formal distinction between incorporation and conflation processes. In particular, following Talmy’s (1991, 2000) well-known typological distinction between “verb-framed languages” and “satellite-framed languages”, it will be shown that his “co-event conflation pattern” can be dealt with by using the formal notion of conflation provided by Mateu (2012). Special attention will be paid to the formation of so-called “unselected object constructions” like the ones exemplified in (1), which can be taken as evidence for (neo)constructionist approaches to argument structure (cf. Goldberg [1995] with Marantz [2005, 2013], Ramchand [2008] or Acedo-Matellán [2010], i.a.): e.g., cf. so-called “strong” resultatives like (1a), resultative V-V compounds in Chinese like (1b), verb-particle constructions like (1c), or constructions with a resultative prefix like Germ. (1d) or Lat. (1e), among others.

(1) a. The dog barked the chickens awake.

      b. Lisi ba shoujuan ku-shi-le. (Chinese)

 Lisi ba handkerchief cry-wet-le

‚Lisi cried the handkerchief wet‘

      c.  John worked his debts off.

      d. Er vergärtnerte sein gesamtes Vermögen. (German)

           he ver(away)-gardener-ed   his   whole fortune

‚In gardening, he used up all his fortune.’

     e. Serpentes  putamina extussiunt. (Latin)

         snakes    shells  out-cough

‘Snakes cough the egg shells out.’

Selected references

Mateu, Jaume. 2012. “Conflation and incorporation processes in resultative constructions”. In Violeta Demonte & Louise McNally (eds.). Telicity, Change, and State. A Cross-Categorial View of Event Structure. Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press.