Abstract
In the paper, we present a frame approach to emission verbs and demonstrate how this framework enables us to account for their different uses and the constructions they can occur in. The frame model we apply is based on Barsalou’s ideas about frames as the fundamental structures of cognitive representation (Barsalou 1992). More precisely, frames are conceived as recursive attribute-value structures that allow one to zoom into conceptual structures to any desired degree and to access meaning components by attribute paths (cf. Petersen 2007/2015). We argue that such a formal frame-based account of meaning is highly suited for capturing the way particular uses of emission verbs are constrained by the interaction of grammar and cognition. The focus of the analysis is on degree gradation of substance emission verbs such as in sehr lecken ‘leak a lot’ as well as sound emission verbs as in sehr dröhnen ‘drone a lot’. We show that a proper treatment of both of these phenomena requires lexical decomposition that goes beyond the traditional event structural templates as applied by Rappaport Hovav and Levin (1998) among others.
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Notes
- 1.
We refer the reader to Borik (2006) for a comparison of different theoretical explications of the notion of telicity.
- 2.
There exists a bunch of literature (e.g. Perlmutter 1978; Gerling and Orthen 1979; Atkins et al. 1988; Atkins and Levin 1991; Levin 1991; Potashnik 2012) discussing various aspects of verbs of emission – e.g. argument realization patterns of verbs of sound emission – which are not relevant for the current discussion. The reader is referred to the mentioned literature.
- 3.
- 4.
Various varieties of German make use of a periphrastic construction for the expression of progressive aspect. As the construction is still on its way of getting grammaticalized, native speakers vary with respect to its acceptability.
- 5.
The notion of a ‘trivial/non-trivial standard’ goes back to Kennedy and McNally (1999). A trivial standard defaults with an endpoint of a scale, whereas a nontrivial standard does not.
- 6.
Manner/result complementarity, as explicated by Rappaport Hovav and Levin (2010), only applies to dynamic predicates since the discussion crucially relies on the notion of ‘change’.
- 7.
In the frame graphs, we mark the central node of a frame that specifies what the frame is about by a double line. For a graph-based definition of static frames see Petersen (2007/2015).
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Acknowledgements
The research presented in this paper was funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) with a grant to the Collaborative Research Centre (SFB) 991 “The Structure of Representations in Language, Cognition, and Science”. We are grateful to the two reviewers of this paper for many valuable comments. We would also like to thank the audiences of TbiLLC 2017 for their feedback on an earlier version.
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Fleischhauer, J., Gamerschlag, T., Petersen, W. (2019). Why Aktionsart-Based Event Structure Templates Are not Enough – A Frame Account of Leaking and Droning. In: Silva, A., Staton, S., Sutton, P., Umbach, C. (eds) Language, Logic, and Computation. TbiLLC 2018. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 11456. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-59565-7_6
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