Einführung in die Linguistik

122 KAPITEL 6. SEMANTIK
Die Stützverbfunktionen
All of Mel’čuk’s support verb functions associate to their arguments sets of
support verbs. So, it is clear that the arguments of support-verb functions must
be lexemes that are predicative but are not suited to build the (surface) predicate
of sentences alone (because of their lexical category). Now, often there are several
support verbs for a predicative lexeme, such that each combination of a support
verb and the lexeme has a meaning that differs in a systematical way from
the meanings of the other combinations. Compare X gives Y a command and X
receives a command from Y with X pays attention to Y and X gets Ys attention.
Mel’čuk’s support-verb functions account for these systematical differences of
meanings of complex surface predicates. There are two triples of them: Oper,
F unc, Labor and Real, F act, Labreal. Unlike the functions of the second triple,
those of the first triple yield support verbs that do not contribute any meaning
components to the complex predicate. I.e., they do not bear lexical, but only
grammatical meaning. The following definitions are summaries of rather loose
descriptions by Mel’čuk et alii (cf. [45, 138f]).
Definition 372 Oper i (X).
The LF Oper i associates a set s ∈ S of support-verbs to a predicative lexeme
L, such that a) and b) hold:
a) L is direct object of the s ∈ S.
b) The index i specifies which argument of is coded by the subject of the
s ∈ S. (L is to itself the 0-th argument.)
Definition 373 F unc i (X). The LF F unc i associates a set s ∈ S of supportverbs
to a predicative lexeme L, such that a) and b) hold:
a) is subject of the s ∈ S.
b) The index i specifies which argument of L is coded by the direct object
[or, by the sole object, respectively] of the s ∈ S. ( L is to itself the 0-th
argument.)
Definition 374 Labor ij (X). The LF Labor ij associates a set of support-verbs
to a predicative lexeme, such that a) to c) hold:
a) is indirect object of the s ∈ S.
b) The index i specifies which argument of L is coded by the subject of the
s ∈ S.
c) The index j specifies which argument of L is coded by the direct object
of the s ∈ S. (is to itself the 0-th argument.)
Anmerkung 56 direct object. By direct objects Mel’čuk understands accusative
objects or objects without preposition or morphological marking. All
other objects he calls indirect. Mel’čuk may not agree with the passage “[or, by
the sole object, respectively]” in the definition of F unc i . I didn’t find anything
like that in [45] or elsewhere in Mel’čuk’s work. But this passage is necessary to
make the definition consistent with the examples of Mel’čuk et alii.