Natural Language & Linguistic Theory ( IF 1.156 ) Pub Date : 2021-04-09 , DOI: 10.1007/s11049-021-09511-4 Andrew McKenzie
Noun incorporation is commonly thought to avoid the weak compositionality of compounds because it involves conjunction of an argument noun with the incorporating verb. However, it is weakly compositional in two ways. First, the noun’s entity argument needs to be bound or saturated, but previous accounts fail to adequately ensure that it is. Second, non-arguments are often incorporated in many languages, and their thematic role is available for contextual selection.
We show that these two weaknesses are actually linked. We focus on the Kiowa language, which generally bars objects from incorporation but allows non-arguments. We show that a mediating relation is required to semantically link the noun to the verb. Absent a relation, the noun’s entity argument is not saturated, and the entire expression is uninterpretable. The mediating relation for non-objects also assigns it a thematic role instead of a postposition. Speakers can choose this role freely, subject to independent constraints from the pragmatics, syntax, and semantics.
Objects in Kiowa are in fact allowed to incorporate in certain environments, but we show that these all independently involve a mediating relation. The mediating relation for objects quantifies over the noun and links the noun+verb construction to the rest of the clause. The head that introduces this relation re-categorizes the verb in the syntactic derivation. Essentially, we demonstrate two distinct mechanisms for noun incorporation.
Having derived the distribution of Kiowa, we apply the same relations to derive constraints on English complex verbs and synthetic compounds, which exhibit most of the same constraints as Kiowa noun incorporation. We also look at languages with routine object incorporation, and show how the transitivity of the verb depends on whether the
中文翻译:
名词合并的中介功能和语义
通常认为名词合并可以避免化合物的弱组成性,因为它涉及一个论点名词与合并动词的连接。但是,它在两种方面构成较弱。首先,名词的实体参数需要绑定或饱和,但是以前的说法未能充分确保它是正确的。其次,非自变量通常包含在多种语言中,并且它们的主题作用可用于上下文选择。
我们证明这两个弱点实际上是相互联系的。我们专注于Kiowa语言,该语言通常禁止对象合并,但不允许使用非参数。我们表明,需要中介关系才能将名词与动词进行语义链接。如果没有关系,则名词的实体参数不会饱和,并且整个表达式无法解释。非对象的中介关系还为其分配了主题角色,而不是后置角色。演讲者可以不受语用,语法和语义的独立约束,自由选择此角色。
实际上,允许Kiowa中的对象在某些环境中合并,但是我们证明了这些都独立地涉及中介关系。对象的中介关系对名词进行量化,并将名词+动词结构链接到该子句的其余部分。引入这种关系的头将动词重新归类到句法推导中。从本质上讲,我们展示了两种不同的名词合并机制。
得出了Kiowa的分布后,我们应用相同的关系来得出对英语复杂动词和合成复合词的约束,这些约束表现出与Kiowa名词并入最基本相同的约束。我们还将研究带有常规对象合并的语言,并说明动词的可及性如何取决于