Verbconstructions cross-linguistically - Introduction

Presented here is an initiative for constructing an environment enabling the enumeration of verb constructions cross-linguistically. The aims are:

• For each language, that the enumeration be complete and transparent;
• Across languages, that the enumerations be comparable.

The hope is to thereby create an efficient tool for comparative analysis, and for boosting analysis of individual languages.

The Enumeration Tool (ET) will have the shape of a Labeling System which, for any verb construction of a given language, provides a Template for that construction type displaying its argument structure and other properties, in a fashion transparent and rooted in established descriptive and analytic terminology for that language. The Template is constructed from 'Fractals' defined in a universally established inventory of labeling primitives, with equivalence classes where necessary reflecting diversity of traditions.

For languages closely related, the Template inventories will be close, and the sets of Fractals constituting them possibly identical. For such languages, both comparison and boosting will be feasible through 'check-listing': if they both have established Template inventories, one compares going down the list; and if one language has an inventory and the other not, one sees which ones from the former apply in the latter (an independent process is then needed to establish constructions particular to the latter language - what is here provided is a tool for boosting inventory formation, not for completing it).

When the languages are remote from each other, both Templates and their Fractals may overlap only to a small extent. For comparison in such cases, it is important that one creates a hierarchy of over-arching common categories and distinctions, drawing on established Linguistic Typology work (it is NOT a strategy to here impose notions suitable for one of the languages (for instance, a European one) on the other, for the gain of quick alignment).

The initiative has started with, on the one hand, a rather extensive inventory of Verb Constructions in Norwegian (based on the TROLL 1989 work, NorKompLeks 1996, and Norsource 2007), and on the other, a comparative survey of closely related languages of the Volta Basin Area (supported by The Legon-Trondheim project on Ghanaian languages). Thus both scenarios mentioned above are being instantiated.

The characterization of a construction type relates to at least the following parameters, when applicable:

• diathesis/argument operations (such as passive, causativisation, applicative formation),
• syntactic valency,
• semantic participants,
• particular patterns of agreement, including coreference patterns (such as 'equi' and 'raising' patterns, argument sharing, secondary predication), tense/aspect agreement, and subject and object marking,
• 'full' vs 'expletive' elements. NOT included is modification and syntactic processes not particular to the formation or modification of argument structure.

We briefly exemplify the build-up of Templates, as they are designed at the present point. The basic structural parts of a Template are referred to as slots. In the slot specification, the following conventions are observed:

• Slots are interconncted by '-' (hyphen).
• Distinct items inside a slot are interconnected by '_' (underline).
• An item label containing neither ‘-‘ nor ‘_’ is an uninterrupted sequence of letters. If it acts as a complex label, the internal composition is indicated by alternation between small and capital letters. Constructions with a Verb as head have a Template structure with five slots:

Slot 1: POS of the head. Slot 2: Valency: transitivity specification - intr, tr, ditr, trScprAdj (see list below) Slot 3: Dependent Specification: comments on syntactic and referential properties of the arguments – examples are: subjExpl (expletive subject), objIndef (indefinite object), objAcc (accusative object), objDECL (declarative clause acting as object). Slot 4: Participant Roles. Slot 5: Situation Type: a label for the situation type expressed by the construction, written in CAPS Slots 1 and 2 are obligatorily filled, the others not.

The following Template illustrates a construction type available in Norwegian (with an example sentence, its gloss, and an English translation):

v-trCseResultSecprAdj-Objnrg-ag_csd-CAUSE_RESULT

han sang rommet tomt

he sing-PST room-DEF empty-NEUT.SG

N V N A

he sang the room empty

This Template reads as:

Slot 1: The head is V;

Slot 2: the syntactic frame is transitive with a secondary adjectival predicate expressing a result whose cause is expressed by the primary predicate, and whose logical subject is the object;

Slot 3: the object is semantically a non-argument relative to the verb (having its participant role assigned by the secondary predicate);

Slot 4: the thematic roles of the verb are 'agent' and 'caused';

Slot 5: the situation type is one of 'caused result'.