Drawing upon recent insights into the role of Goal preference as reflector of cross-linguistic differences, this paper investigates the factors affecting the realization of Goals in motion event descriptions. In particular, it examines the interplay between the lexicalization pattern of a language, on the one hand, and grammatical viewpoint aspect, on the other – factors which have commonly been treated in isolation. In so doing, three typologically distinct languages were examined: English, German and Greek. The ...

The grammatical categories of our language can influence how we concep-tualize situations and events (Slobin 1996). A variety of studies have investigated the influence of grammatical aspect on event conceptualization and found language-specific perspectivation strategies (Stutterheim 2012): Speakers of languages with grammaticized aspect preferentially focus on dynamic event components, while speakers of non-aspect languages conceptualize events holistically by including an inferable resultant state in their ...

This paper investigates the notion of normality in the context of the divide between word-formation and syntax. Knowledge about what is normal finds its expression in generic characterizations about kinds (Ducks lay eggs), and we will present evidence that newly formed word-formation products like 'Rotdach' (‘red_roof’), in contrast to their phrasal counterparts, are more inclined to adopt kind readings. The compounds’ affinity to function as names for kinds will be explained on grounds of a pragmatic, manner-based ...

Quotation marks are a tool to refer to the linguistic form of an expression. For instance, in cases of so-called pure quotation as in “Hanover” has three syllables, they point to the syllabic characteristics of the name of the town of Hanover. Cases of this nature differ from sentences like Hanover is a town in New Hampshire, in which Hanover is used denotationally and, thus, refers to the town of Hanover itself. Apart from quotation marks, other means such as italics, bold, capitalization, or air quotes represent ...

This study investigates the memorization of complex lexical items from a cross-linguistic perspective and in the context of the debate about the demarcation between morphology and syntax. For this purpose, we conducted an experimental study in which German, French and English adjective-noun/noun-adjective combinations (e.g. Jungtourist, jeune touriste, YOUNG tourist, young TOURist) were tested with respectto how well they were memorized. Using existing nouns (e.g. Architekt, architecte, architect) as a baseline, we ...

In name-informing constructions like "The phenomenon is called a “sun halo”", the noun mentioned in the quotation (a “sun halo”) adopts a referring interpretation, as indicated by the determiner. As an account, we claim predicates like call to introduce a copular relation, which is the source of referring uses of nominals in name-informing quotation: To call y “n” entails that y is an n. Two copula types are argued to be covertly contained in name-informing constructions, an identificational copula and an equative ...

The current paper investigates German verb-noun compounds like Parkticket (‘park ticket’) and examines the structural and semantic visibility of the verbal modifier and, in particular, its situation variable. The latter will be analyzed as generically bound while pronominal access to this variable will be explained with the permeability of the Principle of Lexical Integrity. Several test criteria, like argument saturation and PRO control, lead to the assumption of a phrasal projection below the word level, which is ...

The current paper discusses the lexicalization of complex constructions composed of an adjective and a noun. It is argued that compounds/compound-like constructions are more prone to become lexicalized than phrases/phrase-like constructions. The relationship between lexicalization and the cognitive process of memorization represents a key point of our analysis. We report evidence from psycholinguistic studies contrasting compounds/compound-like constructions to phrases/phrase-like constructions either within a single ...

The aim of the current study is to investigate crosslinguistic differences in the encoding of motion events and the distribution of their constituent parts, that is, the manner as well as the path focusing mainly on the Goal component. In the abundant literature on the effect of the lexicalization pattern of a language (Satellite- versus Verb-framed), only a few studies have systematically taken into account the specific properties of the situation underlying a verbalization. With a focus on German and Greek, we ...

Generic interpretations as in “The tiger kills to survive” have often been observed to reconstitute the linguistic acceptability of certain verb argument structure modifications. But can the right context rescue everything? This paper investigates the impact a generic interpretation can have on three types of argument alternations: (i) the intransitive use of inherently telic verbs like “to kill”, (ii) the intransitive use of stative verbs like “to love”, and (iii) middle alternations like “it reads easily”. It will ...