Verb-particle constructions (phrasal verbs) are a notoriously difficult aspect of English to acquire for second-language (L2) learners. This study was conducted to assess whether L2 English speakers would show sensitivity to the subtle semantic properties of these constructions, namely the gradations in semantic transparency of different verb-particle constructions (e.g., finish up vs. chew out...

in this article, the causative alternation in persian is discussed. first, it is shown that persian anticausative verbs involve a cause component and an implicit external argument. second, we claim that causative alternation arises when a single change-of-state verb invokes more than one semantic frame (fillmore, 1985): causative frame and anticausative frame. these semantic frames are the resu...

Hubble, Ryan M. M.A. Purdue University, December 2013. The ‘X it up’ Verb Construction: A Syntactic and Sociolinguistic Approach. Major Professor: Elena Benedicto. This thesis focuses on a unique and, as of yet, unstudied particle verb construction in English, referred to as the ‘X it up’ construction (e.g. I partied it up last night). Syntactic and sociolinguistic perspectives are taken to exp...

In the work presented here we assess the degree of compositionality of German Particle Verbs with a Distributional Semantics Model which only relies on word window information and has no access to syntactic information as such. Our method only takes the lexical distributional distance between the Particle Verb to its Base Verb as a predictor for compositionality. We show that the ranking of dis...

This paper presents a method for identifying token instances of verb particle constructions (VPCs) automatically, based on the output of the RASP parser. The proposed method pools together instances of VPCs and verb-PPs from the parser output and uses the sentential context of each such instance to differentiate VPCs from verb-PPs. We show our technique to perform at an F-score of 97.4% at iden...

meaning. As Lehmann (1995[1982]:129) puts it, “[g]rammaticalization rips off the lexical features until only the grammatical features are left”. The original meaning of a grammaticalizing item plays an important role in its further development (Hopper & Traugott 1993:3). That is, the etymology of a grammaticalizing item constrains its subsequent grammatical functions. This property is called pe...

â â€œshodan” is a multifunctional verb in persian language. this paper deals with six different functions of “shodan” based on a purely formal approach. these functions are as follows: liking verb, light verb in some compound predicates, auxiliary verb, helping verb in passive voice, modal verb, and simple verb. the interface between lexicon and syntax, and the ways to show this relations...