Both of animacy and event structure are core semantic elements of anticausativization of verbs. Event structure determines the eventual types that verbs express, and animacy influences the semantic roles of verbs' arguments. One of essential semantic conditions of anticausativization is verbs' complex event structural representation, which must consist an external causal sub event and a state change sub event. Then, the subject argument should not be constrained by animacy, for it refers to either human or other animals of high agency or such inanimate objects as natural forces; while the theme argument should refer to inanimate objects which include concrete physical objects and abstract things confirmed by COCA corpus. The modifiers in anticausative structures also confirm the constraint of animacy on the choice of verbs' arguments.
ZHAO Lixia, LIU Zhenqian
. Semantic Constraints of Animacy and Event Structure on Anticausativization of Verbs[J]. Contemporary Foreign Languages Studies, 2016
, 16(02)
: 5
-10
.
DOI: 10.3969/j.issn.1674-8921.2016.02.001
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