the existing literature on bantu verbal semantics demonstrated that inherent semantic content of verbs pairs directly with the selection of tense, aspect and modality formatives in bantu languages like chasu, lucazi, lusamia, and shiyeyi. thus, the gist of this paper is the articulation of semantic classification of verbs in kiswahili based on the selection of tam types. this is because the sem...

Coercion is an inferential process through which operator-argument conflicts are resolved in favor of the meaning of the operator, as when frame adverbials impose inchoative readings upon state-type predicates with which they are combined: The ambulance was there in a few minutes. De Swart (1998) represents such effects by means of implicit type-shifting operators that intervene between operato...

English. Lexical sets contain the words filling the argument positions of a verb in one of its senses. They can be extracted from corpora automatically. The purpose of this paper is demonstrating that their vector representation based on word embedding provides insights onto many linguistic phenomena, such as causativeinchoative verbs. A first experiment aims at investigating the internal struc...

This paper presents some key findings of studies actionality and the verbal grammar–lexicon interface in two Nguni Bantu languages South Africa, Xhosa Southern Ndebele. We describe interactions between grammatical tense marking (and other sentential bounding elements) lexical verb types, arguing for salience inchoative verbs, which lexically encode a resultant state, and, particular, sub-class ...

Lexical sets contain the words filling an argument slot of a verb, and are in part determined by selectional preferences. The purpose of this paper is to unravel the properties of lexical sets through distributional semantics. We investigate 1) whether lexical set behave as prototypical categories with a centre and a periphery; 2) whether they are polymorphic, i.e. composed by subcategories; 3)...

Aspectual operators like the progressive in English change the aspectual nature of the eventuality. The meaning shift is grammaticalized by means of a morphological marker or a syntactic construction. But sometimes aspectual shift is hidden. These are cases where an eventuality description is coerced in order to repair the mismatch between the aspectual nature of the eventuality and the aspectu...

In this paper we argue that by making a careful distinction between the notions of inchoativity and telicity, we can gain new insight into how changes of state can be expressed in natural language. Our argument is based on an analysis of Spanish reflexive psychological verbs (SRPVs) such as aburrirse ‘to be/become bored’ and enfadarse ‘to become angry’. We present diagnostics that clearly suppo...

1 Current approaches Over the last fteen years, following Perlmutter and Postal's work (1983), there has been constant interest in the problem raised by transitivity alternations. In their work Perlmutter and Postal argued that the single argument of intransitive verbs may either be generated as an object of the verb (unaccusative verbs) or as a subject (unergative verbs) (cf. Bassac, 1997). A ...