The interaction between the verb and the aspectual construction

In many cases the meaning of the verb seems to determine the meaning of the construction in which it appears. Thus, in (17) the meaning of the construction corresponds to the meaning evoked by the matrix: X causes Y to move Z.

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(17) Pat put the ball on the table.

There are also many cases where the resulting aspectual meaning cannot be regarded as solely coming from the verb but it is attributable to the construction itself:

(18) Pat smiled her appreciation. (Goldberg 1997: 384)

In this sentence the argument is not brought by the verb, but by the argument construction. Similar is the case with several resultative double object constructions, where the argument roles are not understood as inherently required by the verb (19-20)28.

(19) Dana cried her eyes out.

(20) The athletes ran the pavement thin. (Levin and Rappaport 2005: 219)

In order to account for such constructions, construction grammar adopts an event- semantic approach. The semantic frame of a construction is taken to represent an event type, e.g. X causes Y to receive Z (a ditransitive construction), with various semantic roles (argument roles) (patient, agent, recipient in the case of the ditransitive construction) that are not lexically filled (or partly filled) in advance, but will be filled in by the integration of the verb and its participant roles into the frame of the construction. The verb enters its place in the construction with its

28

In order to differentiate between these the cases where the argument roles of a construction are the same as that of the matrix and also where the arguments roles are not solely defined by the verb, Ritter and Rosen (1998) distinguish between strong verbs and weak verbs. According to them, strong verbs can lexically determine the number as well as the syntactic and semantic behavior of their arguments. Weak verbs, by contrast, lack sufficient lexical semantic representation to uniquely determine the number and also the syntactic and semantic properties of arguments. While strong verbs impose several restrictions on their use, weak verbs are more context-dependent so that their interpretation also depends on the elements they appear with. In this latter case the number and syntactic position of arguments are determined by the event structure of the clause in which the verb appears.

A similar differentiation is also present in Mohanan and Mohanan’ work (1998), who differentiate between strong projection, when the lexical semantics of a verb determines its argument structure and weak projection, when the lexical semantics of the verb constrains, but does not determine its argument structure.

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‘core’ or ‘root’ meaning, which can be defined as its minimal meaning with its associated arguments (Goldberg, 1997: 191). The verb can be integrated into the meaning of the construction only if its meaning is compatible with the meaning of the construction.

Sem CAUSE-BECOME < agt pat result-goal > R

R:instance, PRED < >

means

Syn V SUBJ OBJ OBL AP/PP

Table 1: The relation between the verb and its constituents within the resultative construction as understood by Goldberg (1995)

Goldberg (1995, 2003, 2006) differentiates between the participant roles of the verb (specified by its semantic frame) and the argument roles of a construction. The integration of the participant roles of the main verb with the argument roles of the construction is defined as ‘fusion’. Goldberg (1995) borrows the term ‘fusion’ from Jackendoff (1990), who uses this term to describe the integration of the verb with its participant roles.

Goldberg defines fusion as ‘the simultaneous semantic constraints on the participant roles associated with the verb and the argument roles of the construction’ (Goldberg, 1995: 50). Fusion will often be interpreted as a form of ‘grammatical blending’ in cognitive space grammar (blending can be defined as conceptual integration, the matching of two input spaces and projecting them into a third space, the blend) (Fauconnier and Turner, 1996).

In Goldberg’s work (1995, 2006), the fusion between the participant roles of the verb and the argument structure of the construction is governed by some principles, like the Semantic Coherence Principle and the Correspondence Principle. The Semantic Coherence Principle determines which roles are semantically compatible

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and can be fused. According to this principle, two roles r1 and r2 are considered compatible if r1 can appear as an instance of r2. Thus, for example, in a situation like (21) Joe kicked Bill the ball, the kicker participant may be fused with the agent role of the construction, as the kicker role can be construed as an instance of the agent role.

The Correspondence Principle states that all participant roles that are lexically profiled must be fused with the argument roles of the construction. It follows from this that each profiled role of the verb must be accounted for by the construction. The relation between the participant roles of the verb and the argument structures of the construction can vary from cases where the verb is put to a one-to-one correspondence with the argument roles associated with a construction to cases where there is a mismatch of roles, so that it comes to no one-to-one correspondence between the argument roles of the verb and the participant roles of a construction. In this latter case certain roles are added to the verbs by the constructions themselves; these roles will then be attributed to the construction, and not to the verb. Thus, e.g. in the example above, Joe kicked Bill the ball, the recipient role Bill is contributed by the construction, and not by the verb.

The fusion between the participant roles of verbs and the argument roles of constructions presupposes that they be causally or force-dynamically related. This is in accordance with the Causal Relation Hypothesis, which states that ‘the meaning designated by the verb and the meaning designated by the construction must be integrated via a (temporally contiguous) causal relationship’ (Goldberg 1995: 61).

According to this principle, the verb inherently designates a particular aspect of the aspectual construction in which it appears (Goldberg, 1995). This is realized by a relation of instance, so that the event type designated by the verb is an instance of a more general event type designated by the construction. To illustrate this point, Goldberg gives several examples where the meaning of the verb is an instance of the meaning expressed by the construction. One such an example is ditransitive construction (22) She handed him the ball, where the meaning expressed by the verb (a transfer event) is also the meaning associated by the construction. Another

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example is construction (23) She put the phone on the desk- here also, the meaning expressed by the verb, a type of caused-motion corresponds to the caused-motion meaning associated with the construction.

Exceptions to this causal relation are cases where there is a mismatch between the frame of a construction and the entailment of the verb. In sentence (24), for example, the frame of the aspectual construction X causes Y to receive Z is not entailed by the matrix. In this case the verb negates the positive meaning of the construction. Goldberg (1997) states that although in this case the causal relation between the verb and the construction is not realized in a straightforward way, negation is similar to causation in the way that they are both ‘force-dynamic’, which means that they involve energetic interactions, forces, counterforces and tendencies (Goldberg 1997:393). (A force dynamic scenario presupposes two causally related events (a manipulator that acts on a manipulee) that are compressed into a force-dynamic event). (Broccias 2006)

(24) Pat refused Chris a kiss.

Concerning the realization of complement forms, Goldberg interprets it as resulting from the integration of the participant roles of the matrix (specified by its semantic frame) into the structure of the construction (the argument roles of the construction).

In her theory of construction, Goldberg focuses on the analysis of ditransitive constructions. By giving examples of cases where the ditransitive construction is not projected by the matrix, she points to the necessity of analyzing the complement forms at the level of the entire construction.

3.3. A possible approach to the analysis of aspectual complementation