Hostname: page-component-7b7567c8c-kwt9d Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2026-11-14T22:18:40.411Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Verbs in the lexicon: Why is hitting easier than breaking?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 March 2014

Gail McKoon and
Jessica Love
Gail McKoon
Affiliation:
Ohio State University
Jessica Love*
Affiliation:
Ohio State University
*
Correspondence addresses: Gail McKoon, Department of Psychology, Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio, 43210. Email: mckoon.1@osu.edu.
Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Core share and HTML view are not available for this content. However, as you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the 'Save PDF' action button.

Adult speakers use verbs in syntactically appropriate ways. For example, they know implicitly that the boy hit at the fence is acceptable but the boy broke at the fence is not. We suggest that this knowledge is lexically encoded in semantic decompositions. The decomposition for break verbs (e.g. crack, smash) is hypothesized to be more complex than that for hit verbs (e.g. kick, kiss). Specifically, the decomposition of a break verb denotes that “an entity changes state as the result of some external force” whereas the decomposition for a hit verb denotes only that “an entity potentially comes in contact with another entity.” In this article, verbs of the two types were compared in a lexical decision experiment—Experiment 1—and they were compared in sentence comprehension experiments with transitive sentences (e.g. the car hit the bicycle and the car broke the bicycle)—Experiments 2 and 3. In Experiment 1, processing times were shorter for the hit than the break verbs and in Experiments 2 and 3, processing times were shorter for the hit sentences than the break sentences, results that are in accord with the complexities of the postulated semantic decompositions.

Keywords

verbsmental representationsprocessing time

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
Language and Cognition , Volume 3 , Issue 2 , June 2011, pp. 313 - 330
Copyright
Copyright © UK Cognitive Linguistics Association 2011

References

Balota, D. A. & Spieler, D. H. 1999. Word frequency, repetition, and lexicality effects in word recognition tasks: Beyond measures of central tendency. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General 128. 32–55.Google Scholar
Beavers, J. 2006. Argument/ oblique alternations and the structure of lexical meaning. Stanford, CA: Stanford University dissertation.Google Scholar
Beavers, J. In press. On affectedness. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 29.Google Scholar
Beavers, J. & Francez, I.. In press. Several problems with predicate decompositions. Proceedings of the Thirty-Second Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society.Google Scholar
Carrier, J. & Randall, J. H.. 1992. The argument structure and syntactic structure of resultatives. Linguistic Inquiry 23. 173–234.Google Scholar
Coltheart, M., Rastle, K., Perry, C., Ziegler, J. & Langdon, P.. 2001. DRC: A dual route cascade model of visual word recognition and reading aloud. Psychological Review 108. 204–256.Google Scholar
Davis, A. & Koenig, J. P.. 2000. Linking as constraints on word classes in a hierarchical lexicon. Language 76. 56–91.Google Scholar
Dowty, D. R. 1979. Word meaning and Montague grammar. Dordrecht: Reidel.Google Scholar
Dowty, D. R. 1991. Thematic proto-roles and argument selection. Language 67. 547–619.Google Scholar
Fillmore, C. J. 1970. The grammar of hitting and breaking. In Jacobs, R. & Rosenbaum, P. (eds.), Readings in English transformational grammar, 120–133. Waltham, MA: Ginn.Google Scholar
Fodor, J. D., Fodor, J. A. & Garrett, M. F.. 1975. The psychological unreality of semantic representations. Linguistic Inquiry 6. 515–531.Google Scholar
Fodor, J. A., Garrett, M. F., Walker, E. C. T. & Parkes, C. H.. 1980. Against definitions. Cognition 8. 263–367.Google Scholar
Fodor, J. A. & Lepore, E.. 1998. The emptiness of the lexicon: Reflections on James Pustejovsky's The generative lexicon. Linguistic Inquiry 29. 269–288.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Francis, W. N. & Kucera, H.. 1982. Frequency analysis of English usage: Lexicon and grammar. Boston: Houghton-Mifflin.Google Scholar
Gennari, S. & Poeppel, D.. 2003. Processing correlates of lexical semantic complexity. Cognition 89. 27–41.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Goldberg, A. E. 1995. Constructions: A construction grammar approach to argument structure. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Grainger, J. & Jacobs, A. M.. 1996. Orthographic processing in visual word recognition: A multiple read-out model. Psychological Review 103. 518–565.Google Scholar
Grimshaw, J. 1990. Argument structure. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Jackendoff, R. S. 1972. Semantic interpretation in generative grammar. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Jackendoff, R. S. 1990. Semantic structures. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Jackendoff, R. S. 1996. The proper treatment of measuring out, telicity, and perhaps even quantification in English. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 14. 305–354.Google Scholar
Jurafsky, D. 1996. A probabilistic model of lexical and syntactic access and disambiguation. Cognitive Science 20. 137–194.Google Scholar
Kemmerer, D. 2003. Why can you hit someone on the arm but not break someone on the arm? A neuropsychological investigation of the English body-part possessor ascension construction. Journal of Neurolinguistics 16. 13–36.Google Scholar
Kemmerer, D. & Wright, S. K.. 2002. Selective impairment of knowledge underlying un- prefixation: Further evidence for the autonomy of grammatical semantics. Journal of Neurolinguistics 15. 403–432.Google Scholar
Kintsch, W. 1974. The representation of meaning in memory. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Koontz-Garboden, A. 2009. Anticausativization. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 27. 77–138.Google Scholar
Levin, B. 1993. English verb classes and alternations: A preliminary investigation. Chicago, IL: Chicago University Press.Google Scholar
Levin, B. & Hovav, M. Rappaport. 1995. Unaccusativity: At the syntax-lexical semantics interface. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
MacDonald, M. C., Pearlmutter, N. J. & Seidenberg, M. S.. 1994. Lexical nature of syntactic ambiguity resolution. Psychological Review 101. 676–703.Google Scholar
Mauner, G., Tanenhaus, M. K. & Carlson, G. N.. 1995. A note on parallelism effects in processing deep and surface verb-phrase anaphora. Language and Cognitive Processes 10. 1–12.Google Scholar
McKoon, G. & Macfarland, T.. 2000. Externally and internally caused change of state verbs. Language 76. 833–858.Google Scholar
McKoon, G. & Macfarland, T.. 2002. Event templates in the lexical representations of verbs. Cognitive Psychology 45. 1–44.Google Scholar
McKoon, G. & Ratcliff, R.. 2003. Meaning through syntax: language comprehension and the reduced relative clause construction. Psychological Review 110. 490–525.Google Scholar
McKoon, G. & Ratcliff, R.. 2005. “Meaning through Syntax” in sentence production and comprehension. Psychological Review 112. 1032–1039.Google Scholar
McKoon, G. & Ratcliff, R.. 2008. Meanings, propositions, and verbs. Psychonomic Bulletin and Review 15. 592–597.Google Scholar
McRae, K., Spivey-Knowlton, M. J. & Tanenhaus, M. K.. 1998. Modeling the influence of thematic fit (and other constraints) in on-line sentence comprehension. Journal of Memory and Language 38. 283–312.Google Scholar
Moens, M. & Steedman, M.. 1988. Temporal ontology and temporal reference. Computational Linguistics 14. 15–28.Google Scholar
Pinker, S. 1989. Learnability and cognition: The acquisition of argument structure. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Plaut, D. C. 1997. Structure and function in the lexical system: Insights from distributed models of word reading and lexical decision. Language and Cognitive Processes 12. 767–808.Google Scholar
Princeton University. 2010. The WordNet Project.Google Scholar
Pustejovsky, J. 1991. The syntax of event structure. Cognition 41. 47–81.Google Scholar
Rappaport Hovav, M. & Levin, B.. 1998. Building verb meanings. In Butt, M. & Geuder, W. (eds.), The projection of arguments, 97–134. Stanford, CA: CSLI Publications.Google Scholar
Ratcliff, R., Gomez, P. & McKoon, G.. 2004. A diffusion model account of the lexical-decision task. Psychological Review 111. 159–182.Google Scholar
Seidenberg, M. S. & McClelland, J. L.. 1989. A distributed, developmental model of word recognition and naming. Psychological Review 96. 523–568.Google Scholar
Simpson, J. 1983. Resultatives. In Levin, L., Rappaport, M. & Zaenen, A. (eds.), Papers in lexical-functional grammar, 143–157. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Lingustics Club.Google Scholar
Smith, M. C. 1991. On the recruitment of semantic information for word fragment completion: Evidence from bilingual priming. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory and Cognition 17. 234–244.Google Scholar
Tenny, C. L. 1994. Aspectual roles and the syntax-semantics interface. Dordrecht: Kluwer.Google Scholar
Van Valin, R. D. Jr. & LaPolla, R. J.. 1997. Syntax: Structure, meaning and function. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Vendler, Z. 1967. Linguistics and philosophy. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar