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The Structure of Lexical Meaning: Why Semantics Really Matters

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 February 2026

John Beavers
John Beavers*
Affiliation:
The University of Texas at Austin
*
Department of Linguistics The University of Texas at Austin 1 University Station, B5100 Austin, TX 78712-0198, [jbeavers@mail.utexas.edu]
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Abstract

This article explores the architecture of the interface between morphosyntax and lexical semantics, in particular the semantic underpinnings of argument realization. Many theories of lexical meaning assume that argument realization is derived from underlying event structure: the relative prominence of coarguments in a clause follows from their relative semantic prominence in how the event unfolds. I show that event structure is not sufficient to capture certain generalizations about argument realization, however, focusing on arguments that alternate between direct and oblique realization. I show that for these alternations the relevant semantic contrast is in strength of truth conditions: direct realization encodes a monotonically stronger set of truth conditions associated with the alternating argument than oblique realization. This, I suggest, follows if word meanings are built from basic units that are related to one another implicationally, and the relative implicational strength of such components figures into argument realization. I use as a case study English locative and conative alternations, which, I argue, reflect stronger and weaker degrees of affectedness along an independently motivated affectedness hierarchy. I also show that similar contrasts are found with other alternations on other hierarchies. I conclude by suggesting that a theory of weakening truth conditions is not incompatible with event-structural analyses of verb meaning, and in fact the two augment one another.

Keywords

argument realizationlexical semanticsthe syntax/semantics interfaceaffectednessevent structure

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
Language , Volume 86 , Issue 4 , December 2010 , pp. 821 - 864
Copyright
Copyright © 2010 Linguistic Society of America

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Footnotes

*

This article is based on my dissertation (Beavers 2006), though of course many details are left aside here. Thanks go to two anonymous Language referees, Greg Carlson, Cleo Condoravdi, Ashwini Deo, and Jean-Pierre Koenig for extensive comments on earlier drafts. I would also like to thank Farrell Ackerman, David Dowty, Mark Gawron, Nick Gaylord, Kyle Grove, John Hale, Paul Kiparsky, Andrew Koontz-Garboden, Beth Levin, Malka Rappaport Hovav, Ivan Sag, Peter Sells, and Steve Wechsler for comments on earlier versions of these proposals, as well as audiences at HPSG 2005, the NORMS Workshop on Argument Structure, Simon Frasier University, Stanford University, The Ohio State University, the University of California at San Diego, the University of Kentucky at Lexington, The University of Texas at Austin, and WECOL 2004, and participants in John Hale's 2008 Cognitive Science Seminar at Michigan State University.

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