Representing Events in Japanese Complex Predicates
نویسنده
چکیده
This paper presents an event semantics-based investigation of Japanese complex predicates of the form V1+V2, to clarify their syntactic and semantic constitution. The Japanese V1+V2 formation primarily exploits the aspectual modification of a core event; of particular interest here are complex predicates composed of intentional active verbs with te-form + the existential verb a-ru; this complex pattern is known to be ambiguous between what is usually termed a ‘resultative’ and a ‘preparative’ reading. One major problem of the “V-te-a-ru” construction is retrieving the semantic relation linking their components, which is (partially) implicit on the surface. To date, no uniform analysis has been developed to formally account for these facts. The main goal of this study was to develop a uniform analysis of their meaning representations, using Davidson’s (1967) event semantics as a reference model. Basic data revealed some interesting findings, indicating some asymmetry in event structure. This could help identify the semantic relations of components and clarify the semantic representation of a given syntactic paradigm.
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تاریخ انتشار 2010