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Communication Dans Un Congrès Année : 2023

Denominal Verbal Derivation: What is Transmitted from the Noun to the Verb

Résumé

VdenomEN is a database which gathers 5,933 modern English denominal verbs (from 1800 onwards) extracted from two lexicographic databases: the Oxford English Dictionary online [OED 2022] and Green’s Dictionary of Slang [Green 2020]. The database was built as part of an on-going project whose aim is to model the behavior of denominal verbs according to their nominal base (see Héois [2022] for further information). In VdenomEN, the nouns are categorized according to WordNet which distinguishes 25 ontological types of nouns [Miller et al 1990]. Among them are artifact nouns (“N-artifact”) and communication nouns (“N-communication”). The former includes nouns denoting human-made objects, such as revolver or piano, while the latter includes communicative processes and contents such as subtitle or neology. While human experience tends to intuitively differentiate between the two classes and categorize hammer in the former and acronym in the latter, the concrete vs. abstract distinction is not always sufficient. Indeed, some entries raise questions: for instance, WordNet classifies the noun “newspaper” in 4 categories depending on which facet the focus is put (N-communication for its content; N-group for the company; N-artifact for the physical object; and N-substance for the material). The present study focuses on the difference between communication and artifact nouns and more specifically on the relevance of this distinction in the study of denominal verbs: in other words, do denominal verbs from these two categories behave differently? To do so, I randomly select a sample of VdenomEN (600 verbs) in which each base-noun is encoded according to the WordNet categorization. This results in two sub-samples for N-artifacts and N-communications containing respectively 127 and 48 verbs. I then compare the two and observe what is transmitted from the noun to the verb with a specific focus on the semantics and the argument structure of the verbs. For instance, the verb videotape means “to record on videotape” [OED 2021] and is built by conversion of the noun which denotes a “magnetic tape on which moving visual images such as television programmes (together with sound) can be or are recorded” [OED 2022]. Beyond the morphophonological material of the noun, other features are transmitted to the verb such as a semantic content which can be paraphrased as follows: . The argument structure of the verb stems from this paraphrase as the act of recording implies an AGENT who records, a THEME which is recorded, and an INSTRUMENT which is used to record. In the example of videotape, the INSTRUMENT is incorporated in the verb [Kiparsky 1997, among others]. A similar analysis is undertaken for each verb of the two sub-samples and makes it possible to define different categories according to the type of the incorporated argument. Statistical analysis allows then to determine whether these two WordNet categories are relevant in the semantics of denominal verbs. Selected references GREEN Jonathon, 2020, Green’s Dictionary of Slang - Digital Edition, available at: https://greensdictofslang.com/. HÉOIS Aurélie, 2022, “What can Verbal Derivation Tell us about Proper Names?”, Lexis: Journal in English Lexicology, 20. KIPARSKY Paul, 1997, “Remarks on Denominal Verbs”, in ALSINA Alex, BRESNAN Joan & SELLS Peter (Eds.), Complex Predicates, Stanford: CSLI Publications, 473-499. LEVIN Beth, 1993, English Verb Classes and Alternations: A Preliminary Investigation, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. LEVIN Beth & RAPPAPORT HOVAV Malka, 2005, Argument realization, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. MILLER George A., BECKWITH Richard, FELLBAUM Christiane, GROSS Derek & MILLER Katherine, 1990, “Introduction to WordNet: An On-line Lexical Database”, International Journal of Lexicography, 3(4), 235 244. [OED] Oxford University Press (Ed.), 2022, Oxford English Dictionary [online], available on subscription at: www.oed.com. PLAG Ingo, 1999, Morphological productivity: Structural constraints in English derivation, Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. PLAG Ingo, 2004, “Syntactic category Information and the semantics of derivational morphological rules”, Folia Linguistica, 38(3 4), 193 226. TALMY Leonard, 2000, Toward a cognitive semantics. Volume II: Typology and Process in Concept Structuring, Cambridge: MIT Press. WIERZBICKA Anna, 1995, “Universal Semantic Primitives as a Basis for Lexical Semantics”, Folia Linguistica, XXIX(1 2), 149-169.

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Linguistique
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hal-04163854 , version 1 (17-07-2023)

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  • HAL Id : hal-04163854 , version 1

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Aurélie Héois. Denominal Verbal Derivation: What is Transmitted from the Noun to the Verb: The case of artifact and communication nouns. SAES 2023 Transmission(s) - Atelier ALAES/ALOES, SAES; ALAES; ALOES, Jun 2023, Rennes, France. ⟨hal-04163854⟩
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