lexical class, particle-verbs and telicity Cale Johnson - UCLA

AOS2004 / San Diego, March 13, 2004 / Johnson
the BNBV diagnostic can be further subdivided into two distinct sets on the basis of the
(in)alienability of the nominal component of the compound verb: where the nominal
component of a BNBV lexeme is inalienable, the ergative-case marked nominal can be
classified as a perceptual Experiencer or positively affected participant (as opposed to a
dative perceived object or negatively affected entity), but when the nominal component
of the BNBV is alienable, the ergative-case marked nominal is a Causer (as opposed to a
dative Causee). This conforms to both the description of the inchoative/causative nature
of verbs bearing the directive case in the theory of Krecher, Jagersma and Zólyomi
(Zólyomi 1999) as well as the description of inchoative/causative alternation and its
correlation with Experiencer and Causer thematic roles as described by Pesetsky (1995).
The following is a small, contrastive sample of verbal lexemes and their meaning in
BNBV constructions (verba dicendi and denominative verbs in œar are excluded):
BNBV inalienable
BNBV alienable
ßu-√dag “to abandon” ˙i-li-√ak “to make attractive”
a2-√dar “to cheat someone” eß 3-√du 3 “to have a shrine built”
gu2-√du3 “to neglect” pa-√e3 “to make something extend, ramify”
igi-√du8 “to see” kiœ 2-√gi 4 “to send a message”
ni2-√te “to fear” ni2-√gur3 “to imbue with fear”
[4] Low source applicative
(i) The (de)privative semantics of the BNBV inalienable set in conjunction with a bare
nominal whose syntactic role is filled by an oblique, postpositional phrase (the Oblique
Object of the Krecher, Jagersma, and Zólyomi school) is strongly reminiscent of what has
recently been described as a low source applicative [LoAppl] (Pylkkänen 2002). In
general terms, an applicative morpheme allows an nominal phrase that would otherwise
have appeared in an adpositional phrase to appear in a syntactic position that is more
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