[Lexicog] lexical polysemy

[John Roberts]

Peter Kirk wrote:

> OK. I'm not sure if "desert" is can be [-intent] with an animate
> subject; "leave" would be the normal way to express [-intent] although
> it can also be [+intent]. "Desert" can be [-intent] with an inanimate
> subject like "courage", but that may be a separate sense of the word.

A small point. The semantic constraints don't work off the syntactic
functions in this case. You can say "The car was abandoned by the thieves"
in which case the relevant [+intent] is with "the thieves" (not subject) and
not with "car" [-intent] (subject). That was why I used ACTOR macrorole from
RRG. Notice too that you can say "My courage deserted/left me" but you can't
say "*I was deserted/left by my courage". Is that because there is a general
semantic constraint on the argument in the by-phrase? When you start coding
semantic distinctions on words you don't know where it will end.

John Roberts




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