This monograph presents a novel approach to the types of meaning that roots (in the DistributedMorphology sense; seeHalle&Marantz 1993) can have in terms of truthconditional content. The focus of the monograph is on the so-called division of labor between functional structure and roots, i.e. the assumption in current (syntactic) theories of event structure that the meanings contributed by event templates – what John Beavers and Andrew Koontz-Garboden (hereafter, BKG) call templatic meaning – and themeanings contributed by roots aremutually exclusive. In this vein, roots are assumed not to introduce templatic meanings such as change or causation (e.g. Embick 2004, 2009; Borer 2005a; Folli & Harley 2005; Ramchand 2008; Alexiadou, Anagnostopoulou & Schäfer 2015), insofar as this type of meanings is introduced by functional heads in the syntax, e.g. by projections such as little v. The authors strongly argue against theories of event structure assuming such a division of labor by convincingly showing that there are some classes of verbal roots that appear to have templaticmeanings as part of their truth-conditional content. Theirmain piece of evidence comes from contradiction tests and sublexical modification with modifiers such asagain, which are able to target specific parts of the event structure (Dowty 1979). BKG show that while theories of event structure that assume such a (strong) division of labormake some interesting (and sound) predictions about the architecture of event structure, they also make some crucial false predictions about the possible meanings that roots can have, and in turn, about possible verb classes. The theory that BKG lays out regarding root meaning is of particular theoretical relevance since the role that roots play in meaning composition has generally been neglected. In this respect, previous research has mostly focused on the meanings that event templates contribute. Roots, in turn, have been assumed to simply provide idiosyncratic information (also called encyclopedic information or conceptual content) about the state or action they denote, but such information is assumed not to be grammatically relevant (e.g. Mateu & Acedo-Matellán 2012; Acedo-Matellán & Mateu 2014), namely, it does not have an impact on syntactic structure. This view is taken to the extreme in more radical approaches (e.g. Borer 2003, 2005a, 2013), since under such approaches roots are argued to lack any type of information, i.e. content is only introduced when roots appear in some specific grammatical context. Concomitantly, an influential approach classifies roots into ontological types and the type a root bears is argued to determine their syntactic

中文翻译：

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Beavers John 和 Andrew Koontz-Garboden，《语言意义的根源》。牛津：牛津大学出版社，2020。Pp。十七 + 255

这本专着提出了一种新颖的方法来处理根（在分布式形态学意义上；参见Halle&Marantz 1993）在真值条件内容方面可能具有的含义类型。专着的重点是所谓的功能结构和词根之间的分工，即当前（句法）事件结构理论中的假设，即事件模板贡献的意义——约翰·比弗斯和安德鲁·孔茨-加博登（以下简称, BKG) 称模板意义——由词根贡献的意义是互斥的。在这种情况下，假定词根不会引入诸如变化或因果关系之类的模板含义（例如 Embick 2004, 2009; Borer 2005a; Folli & Harley 2005; Ramchand 2008; Alexiadou, Anagnostopoulou & Schäfer 2015），只要这种类型的意义是由句法中的功能元首引入的，例如通过诸如 little v 之类的投影。作者通过令人信服地证明存在某些类别的动词词根，强烈反对假设这种分工的事件结构理论。似乎具有模板意义作为其真值条件内容的一部分。他们的主要证据来自矛盾测试和用 asagain 等修饰语进行的亚词汇修饰，这些修饰语能够针对事件结构的特定部分（Dowty 1979）。BKG 表明，虽然假设这种（强）分工的事件结构理论对事件结构的架构做出了一些有趣（和合理）的预测，但它们也对根可能具有的可能含义做出了一些关键的错误预测，并且在转动，关于可能的动词类别。BKG 提出的关于词根意义的理论具有特殊的理论意义，因为词根在意义构成中所起的作用通常被忽视。在这方面，以前的研究主要集中在事件模板所贡献的含义上。反过来，根被假定只是提供关于它们表示的状态或动作的特殊信息（也称为百科全书信息或概念内容），但假定这些信息在语法上不相关（例如，Mateu & Acedo-Matellán 2012；Acedo -Matellán & Mateu 2014），即它对句法结构没有影响。这种观点在更激进的方法中被极端化（例如 Borer 2003, 2005a, 2013），因为在这种方法下，根被认为缺乏任何类型的信息，即 仅当词根出现在某些特定的语法上下文中时才引入内容。同时，一种有影响力的方法将词根分类为本体类型，并且争论一个词根所承载的类型来确定它们的句法