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Externally and Internally Caused Change of State Verbs

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 February 2026

Gail McKoon and
Talke Macfarland
Gail McKoon*
Affiliation:
Northwestern University
Talke Macfarland
Affiliation:
Northwestern University
*
McKoon, Dept. of Psychology Northwestern University Evanston, IL 60208 [g-mckoon@wu.edu]
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Abstract

The lexical semantic structures of change-of-state verbs are explored via linguistic theory, corpus analysis, and psycholinguistic experimentation. The data support the idea that these verbs can be divided into two classes, those for which the change of state is internally caused and those for which it is externally caused (Levin & Rappaport Hovav 1995, cf. Smith 1970). External causation change-of-state verbs have been hypothesized to denote two subevents, internal causation change-of-state verbs only one event. Consistent with this difference, the psycholinguistic data indicate that, in both transitive and intransitive constructions, sentences with external causation verbs take longer to comprehend than sentences with internal causation verbs.

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
Language , Volume 76 , Issue 4-Part1 , December 2000, pp. 833 - 858
Copyright
Copyright © 2000 Linguistic Society of America

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