Abstract
Verbs are said to play a central role in the lexicalization of events and states—thus they are crucial for understanding how we represent and use information about these events and states in linguistic utterances. This chapter introduces some key controversies in the study of verb meaning and structure from the interdisciplinary perspective of cognitive science. We begin with a methodological discussion on the interdisciplinary investigation characteristic of cognitive science, aiming to understand how different types of evidence might be relevant in uncovering the nature of linguistic and cognitive principles underlying verb meaning and structure, their representations, and processes. We then discuss three broad content areas bearing on verb representation and processing: argument structure, thematic roles, and the nature of semantic or conceptual structure. For each of these areas, we bring sample theoretical and empirical (experimental) research aiming to provide a context for interdisciplinary research conducted in the field and, more specifically, to the chapters collected in the present volume.
Research for this article was supported in part by a grant from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) to RGdA. We are grateful to Lila Gleitman and Merrill Garrett for their comments to an earlier version of this chapter.
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- 1.
Just to be clear on what we mean by “semantic” and “conceptual”: We take verb meanings and word meanings in general to be encoded in the mind/brain as concepts, i.e., mental particulars bearing content. Thus, the verb drink is a lexicalization of a particular event, which is encoded (or represented) as a concept. The concept, just like the lexical item itself, refers to any drinking event. We will use “semantic” and “conceptual” interchangeably although in some theoretical contexts—viz., linguistics—it might be more appropriate to use “semantic” to refer to the content and structure of token items. See Sect. 1.2, for further discussion.
- 2.
This brief survey is certainly nonexhaustive and leaves out a long tradition of psycholinguistic work on verb argument structure and thematic roles (see, e.g., Fodor et al. 1968, for an early account, and Sects. 1.3 and 1.4). For reasons of space, the present chapter does not discuss a vast literature on how verbs are acquired—i.e., on the origins of the link between token verbs and events and states (see, e.g., Gleitman and Gleitman 1992; Gleitman et al. 2005; see also Chaps. 12, 13). Our concern here is that qua mental particulars bearing content far less attention has been given to verbs in areas such as the psychology of concepts and categorization.
- 3.
We do not mean to legislate on disciplinary boundaries. We use traditional labels for these disciplines simply for convenience (see Sect. 1.1). For us, as for many others, linguistics, psycholinguistics, and related fields, are part of cognitive science, for what really matters is the explanatory adequacy of any given theory and its empirical evidence.
- 4.
We can think of a few linguistic theories whose goals are to be somehow compliant with language-processing constraints. Lexical-functional grammar (LFG; see Kaplan and Bresnan 1982/1995), for instance, came out committed to “psychologically plausible processing mechanisms” (pp. 173–174). A similar commitment was made by head-driven phrase structure grammar (HPSG; see Pollard and Sag 1994and, more recently, by Culicover and Jackendoff (2005). This of course is not equivalent to taking experimental evidence into account in postulating linguistic principles. In fact, as Pollard and Sag say, “[w]hereas it is reasonable to expect that further research into human language processing will produce specific results that inform the minute details of future linguistic theories, we do not yet know how to bring these considerations to bear.” (p. 13).
- 5.
We are not implying that empirical data should necessarily determine theory change: data cannot be the sole basis of such change. Without being exegetic in our philosophy of science, we expect this to be a common guiding assumption (see, e.g., Laudan et al. 1986). What we are saying is that experimental data should be taken seriously in advancing theories on representations, if we are to rely on psychological evidence.
- 6.
As important as it is to provide support for linguistic claims, experimental data play an important role in refuting those claims, thus motivating theory change. There is by now a handful of such cases in psycholinguistics. See, for instance, experimental studies on the reality of empty categories—which has been a point of contention between different syntactic theories (e.g., Bever and McElree 1988). For a more recent case, see experimental studies and theoretical debates on the nature of so-called semantic coercion (e.g., de Almeida 2004; de Almeida and Dwivedi 2008; de Almeida and Riven 2012; Pylkkänen and McElree 2006). And as we show in Sect. 1.5, psycholinguistic evidence for and against verb-semantic decomposition lingers within reach of lexical-semantic theories.
- 7.
These are hardly new because perhaps most nonlinguists in cognitive science are keen on describing processes and representations at all these different levels. The case of vision—a hypothetical faculty akin to language—is paradigmatic (see, e.g., Pylyshyn 2004).
- 8.
We use “reference” in a broad sense to include events and states whether they are observable or not—i.e., within and beyond the “perceptual circle” to use Fodor and Pylyshyn’s (2014) term. Thus, while to drink refers to an observable event, to think does not. In both cases, verbs are lexicalizations of the meanings of such happenings.
- 9.
In reality, not even the idea that verb meanings are mental representations (or neurologically encodings) of “happenings” is absolutely uncontroversial—for one might assume that there are no mental/linguistic representations but only behaviors to talk about (e.g., Quine 1960), or that word meanings are not encoded in the mind/brain (e.g., Putnam 1970, 1975)—not at least as definitions but as a form of “use” or “disposition” (see also Wittgenstein (1953) for an anti-mentalistic approach). We take the idea of verb meanings as mental representations to be common to theories within the classic (symbolic) tradition in linguistics and cognitive science.
- 10.
Although this hypothesis might be more readily identified with Fodor (1975), it is also current in other theories (e.g., Jackendoff 1983, 2002) albeit there are some important distinctions. Of general concern here are the productivity and systematicity of linguistic and conceptual representations, which hinge on the characterization of the very nature of their elementary constituents.
- 11.
We have to leave aside many other types of information contributing to the meaning of a predicate and its carrier sentence, such as tense and aspect. But see part III of the present volume for studies involving processing, representation, and impairment of tense and aspect.
- 12.
- 13.
We offer our middles experiments as an example of how behavioral studies can lead to alternative theoretical accounts, much like most in the field, such as the ones we cite above. We are thus avoiding getting into a lengthy methodological and theoretical discussion on all those experimental studies. Of course, the theories that motivate such experiments are also subject to change and thus the interplay between types of evidence and theoretical proposals might lead to progress in our understanding of linguistic and conceptual phenomena.
- 14.
To be consistent with our metalanguage, the interpretation in (9c) should be roughly [ISADORA DID A DANCE], corresponding to the concepts constituents of (9a), assuming this sentence is in fact structured as in (9b). Of course, this conceptual interpretation would be the same had the natural language expression been what it is in (9c).
- 15.
We will not dwell here on the proper labels—e.g., whether the object is a Stimulus, a Causer, or a Theme that the subject experiences. The same applies to example (11) below—whether the internal argument of open is a Patient or Theme.
- 16.
And yet there are those who do not believe there is a conceptual system, but only “conceptual processes” (Barsalou et al. 2003) implemented by linguistic and other input/output systems, including action. We will have to restrain our discussion to those who assume there is some form of cognitive system enabling conceptual processes. But see, e.g., Chap. 9 for a discussion on how a distributed account of verb meaning might be implemented.
- 17.
- 18.
Also see Engelberg (2011b) for a comprehensive review of issues involved in lexical decomposition, most of which we cannot begin to discuss here.
- 19.
We present a simplified version of these templates. The conceptual templates in Jackendoff’s theory (at least in his 1990 work) involve also several features, assuming that even CAUSE is decomposable or that it entails different events. They also contain an action tier specifying whether or not the object is affected. We will not get into these details here.
- 20.
Although we cannot address all arguments posed by Jackendoff (e.g., 1990, 2002) for the decomposition of lexical causatives (or more properly against the view that lexical concepts do not decompose), it is important to note that Jackendoff assumes that the best course for semantics (or the study of conceptual structure) is to rely on the ample analytic possibilities that decomposition affords, for decomposition “…is a richly textured system whose subtleties we are only beginning to appreciate (…). It does remain to be seen whether all this richness eventually boils down to a system built from primitives, or if not, what alternative there may be. And it does remain to be seen whether lexical meaning can be exhaustively constituted by the techniques discussed here” (Jackendoff 2002, p. 377).
- 21.
As we briefly mentioned above (fn. 9), Putnam (1975) argued against meaning representation—at least against definitions—mostly because he assumed correctly that the definition of natural kind terms (gold, tiger) could only be given in scientific terms (viz., the tiger DNA), thus definitions could not be the representations upon which we rely when we entertain the meaning of such terms. We mention this motivated by the puzzle of the internally/externally caused distinction, which must rest on a mentally encoded knowledge of how molecules of potatoes and cement might behave upon rotting or crumbling, respectively.
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de Almeida, R., Manouilidou, C. (2015). The Study of Verbs in Cognitive Science. In: de Almeida, R., Manouilidou, C. (eds) Cognitive Science Perspectives on Verb Representation and Processing. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-10112-5_1
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