[Lexicog] Draining corpora

[Ron Moe]

John,

I'll buy your/Levin's explanation of the transitive/intransitive pairings as
a general rule that is applied to certain semantic classes. But this does
not explain (1) the sink drains, or (4) the pipe drains. Nor does it explain
(5) the child is safe, (6) the beach is safe, (7) the shovel is safe. And
your explanation also runs into problems with counter examples such as:

(8) The bread cut easily once I sharpened the knife. (I cut, the knife cuts,
the bread cuts)

These examples appear to show that any major actant can get promoted to
subject. I doubt that is a general rule applicable to any verb or adjective.
But what permits which actants to be promoted with which predicates? Or is
that even what is going on here? I'll look up Levin's book and see if she
sheds any light on the subject.

My purpose is not to argue the details of syntax, but to have a principled
way of knowing if (1) I need to write multiple definitions for every verb
that permits such patterns, (2) there is a way to word a definition to
handle this, (3) I can formulate rules that could go in a grammar sketch, or
(4) my understanding of semantics is so flawed that I am blundering around
in the dark.

Ron Moe


-----Original Message-----
From: John Roberts [mailto:dr_john_roberts at sil.org]
Sent: Wednesday, October 20, 2004 2:20 AM
To: lexicographylist at yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: [Lexicog] Draining corpora



Ron Moe said:
We may be trying to be a bit more specific with the meaning of 'drain' than
we should be. As with many words, 'drain' activates a prototypical scenario.
Various aspects of the scenario can be commented on:

1. The bathroom sink is draining slowly.
2. I think I've got the sink fixed. At least the water is draining now.
3. You forgot to drain the water in the sink.
4. This is the pipe that drains the sink.

----------

Beth Levin (1993) 'English Verb Classes and Alternations' classifies over
3,000 English verbs according to shared meaning and syntactic/semantic
behaviour. She focusses particularly on the properties of verbs' argument
structure. For example, *drain* belongs to the large class of English verbs
that have transitivity alternations, i.e. they have a transitive and
intransitive alternative use, where the transitive use of a verb V can be
paraphrased as roughly "cause to V-intransitive". These syntactic
alternations take the form of 'NP V NP' alternating with 'NP V' or else 'NP
V PP' in syntactic structure. This class of verb to which *drain* belongs
typically express a change of state or position. Thus it is OK to use
*drain* in these alternate syntactic and semantic structures but not *cut*.

X drained the water
the water drained

X cut the bread
*the bread cut

For example, *drain* also groups with *clear*, *clean* and *empty* to
express a transitive alternation.

Bill drained the water from the sink. (locative variant)
Bill drained the sink of water. (*of* variant)

Here the object of the verb receives the holistic interpretation in the *of*
variant, i.e. the understanding is that all the water was drained from the
sink. The use of the *of* variant is also preferred when the locatum is
abstract: *the exercise drained her of energy/?the exercise drained energy
from her*.

*drain* groups with other verbs as well and shares common semantic
properties with those verb as well.

However, the interest to this list is the question Levin poses at the
introduction of her book: "What underlies the ability (of speakers of the
language) to make such judgements (of meaning)?" She then illustrates with
the archaic English verb *gally*, a whaling term, used as in *The sailors
gallied the whales.* A speaker of English who is unfamiliar with the verb
might assume that *gally* means "see" (*The sailors saw the whales*), while
another speaker might take *gally* to mean "frighten" (*The sailors
frightened the whales*). What she says is striking however, is that on the
basis of these assumptions about the meaning of *gally* the two speakers are
able to make judgements about its syntactic behaviour and usage. So the
speaker who believes that *gally* means "see" would not allow the middle
construction *Whales gally easily (cf. *Whales see easily) but a speaker who
interprets *gally* as "frighten" will find this construction perfectly
acceptable.

What this suggests is that the meaning of a verb like *drain* does not so
much evoke schemas, scenarios, and scenes but instead evokes the semantic
and syntactic properties of the verb class to which *drain* belongs - and
this kind of information can be described in a dictionary. That is one of
the purposes of Levin's book. (She also has over 700 bibliographical
references related to determining the meanings of verbs.)

John Roberts
SIL





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