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Studies in the Composition and Decomposition of Event Predicates pp 99–123Cite as

Two Sources of Scalarity Within the Verb Phrase

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Part of the book series: Studies in Linguistics and Philosophy ((SLAP,volume 93))

Abstract

In this paper I argue for two distinct sources of scalarity within the verb phrase, focusing specifically on VPs headed by incremental theme verbs. First, there is a quantity scale associated with the presence of an incremental theme argument. The scale structure of the quantity scale is crucially related to the part structure of the theme argument, and is the source of observed telicity effects. I argue that the quantity scale is not lexically encoded in the verb, but is derived from the part structure of the nominal argument via a functional morpheme. This morpheme is often silent in English, but in certain cases has an overt realization as partitive of. Second, there is a quality, or prototypicality, scale associated with the lexical entry of the verb itself. This type of scale is related to the different dimensions upon which events are classified by the verbs that name them. I argue that two distinct readings of the the proportional modifier half in English provide evidence for these two sources of scalarity within VP. The analysis is couched within a framework for aspectual composition that adopts the formal properties of scales and degrees that have become standard in recent work on gradable predicates.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    For the purposes of this paper I focus on incremental theme verbs, though many of the behaviors discussed here are also exhibited by change of state verbs. As noted by Tenny (2000), the distinction between incremental theme verbs and change of state verbs can sometimes be blurry, as in the case of verbs like fill or melt.

  2. 2.

    A reviewer correctly points out that (3) also displays a distributive reading, which is true if half of every dish is washed. This amounts to a sub-case of the eventive reading, since it is still the quantity of dishes (or rather the quantity of surface area of each dish) that is at issue.

  3. 3.

    Yahoo Answers: http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080723194852AAdXOe8; retrieved March 1, 2010; emphasis added.

  4. 4.

    Thanks to Anita Mittwoch for pointing out this minimal pair to me.

  5. 5.

    Throughout this paper, in addition to the standard types e for individuals and t for truth values, I also use d for the type of degrees and s for the type of events.

  6. 6.

    Caudal and Nicolas (2005) also formalize a degree-based analysis of aspectual composition, but appear to be non-committal as to where the degree argument comes from, i.e., whether it is associated with the verb from the lexicon or whether it is the result of a type-shifting mechanism.

  7. 7.

    The argumentation in this section is an expanded version of that found in Bochnak (2010b).

  8. 8.

    I also take this as evidence against a type-shifting analysis à la Piñón (2000, 2005), since such an account misses the generalization that the scale at issue is crucially related to the incremental theme argument, and thus it is unclear how this scale could be ‘passed up’ to the verb.

  9. 9.

    Such an account is similar in spirit to the one presented in Stensrud (2009), whereby telicity is derived by measure-of-change function embedded within the VP.

  10. 10.

    This is a slight modification of the analysis of μ in Bochnak (2010b).

  11. 11.

    As for the distributive reading mentioned above, I tentatively propose that some form of a generalized distributivity operator may apply to μ (see Lasersohn, 1998). The application of such an operator would be vacuous in the case where the theme is a singular individual, but would result in a distributive reading over a plural theme argument as in (3).

  12. 12.

    Once again, much of this argumentation is borrowed from Bochnak (2010b).

  13. 13.

    Since μ takes as its first argument an individual of type e, this analysis assumes that bare nominals as in (31b) must be kind-denoting individuals (see Chierchia, 1998).

  14. 14.

    Also see similar proposals for a pos morpheme for events in Piñón (2005, 2008), Kennedy and Levin (2008) and Stensrud (2009).

  15. 15.

    A reviewer wonders whether an agent must have control over the event in order to license the evaluative reading. While it is true that the evaluative reading for half seems marginal with unaccusative verbs like fall or die, which do not select an agent argument, the examples in (33) don’t seem to involve agent control and yet still allow the evaluative reading of half.

  16. 16.

    Tenny (2000) finds these uses of evaluative half to be acceptable, though many speakers I have consulted with find them odd. An evaluative-like reading with these verbs seems more natural with the modifier sort of.

  17. 17.

    A reviewer points out that (35a) accepts adverbial modification by powerfully, which suggests that the verb may be associated with an intensity scale, thereby undermining the idea that such verbs lack a richness of dimensions to license the evaluative reading of half. However, the use of adverbs like powerfully do not indicate that the verb lexicalizes an intensity scale no more than other modifiers that describe manner such as with both hands or by blowing really hard indicate that the verb lexicalizes a number-of-hands-used scale or an amount-of-blowing scale. Correspondingly, these verbs are not classified as manner verbs, meaning that they do not involve complex changes as argued by Rappaport Hovav and Levin (2010).

  18. 18.

    Thanks to a reviewer for pointing out this contrast, and to Eva Csipak for providing judgements on the sentences in (42).

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Acknowledgements

First and foremost, I would like to thank Chris Kennedy for detailed and thought-provoking discussions on this topic over the past months. This work has also greatly benefited from discussions with Peter Alrenga, Itamar Francez, Anastasia Giannakidou and Beth Levin, as well as audiences at the 35th Berkeley Linguistics Society Meeting, Semantics Workshop of the American Midwest and Prairies 2009 in Chicago, the University of Göttingen, SALT XX in Vancouver, and the Workshop on Subatomic Semantics of Event Predicates in Barcelona. All remaining errors and oversights are my responsibility.

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  1. Department of Linguistics, University of Chicago, 1010 E. 59th St., Chicago, IL, 60637, USA

    M. Ryan Bochnak

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  1. M. Ryan Bochnak
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Correspondence to M. Ryan Bochnak .

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  1. Higher Council for Scientific Research, Calle de Serrano 117, Madrid, 28008, Madrid, Spain

    Boban Arsenijević

  2. , Dept. of Translation & Lang. Sciences, Pompeu Fabra University, c/Roc Boronat 138, Barcelona, 08018, Spain

    Berit Gehrke

  3. , UMR 8163 (STL), University of Lille 3, Rue du Barreau - BP 60149, Villeneuve d’Ascq Cedex, 59653, Nord, France

    Rafael Marín

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Bochnak, M.R. (2013). Two Sources of Scalarity Within the Verb Phrase. In: Arsenijević, B., Gehrke, B., Marín, R. (eds) Studies in the Composition and Decomposition of Event Predicates. Studies in Linguistics and Philosophy, vol 93. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-5983-1_5

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