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Show HONORS COLLEGE SPRING 2013 Andrew Lee Zupon Edward Rubin RESTRICTIONS ON DENOMINAL VERB FORMATION Andrew Lee Zupon (Edward Rubin) Department of Linguistics University of Utah Why can one say shelve the books but not desk the papers? Only certain noun roots typically become denominal verbs. I analyze the distribution of denominal verbs in English and restrictions on their formation. I argue that denominal verbs have an additional pragmatic component which is broadly tied to manner, encyclopedic knowledge, or real world typicalities. Shelving books has different connotations than simply putting books on a shelf, whereas there is no equivalent dichotomy relating to placing objects on a desk. There are two sides to this analysis. The first is that the restrictions on denominal verb formation are an effect of the process itself. In this view, any noun root could undergo this process, but the derivation will be licit only if extra meaning is associated with the action. This analysis rests in formal pragmatics. The second analysis is that this additional meaning component is a part of the noun root itself, and the presence of such a component becomes realized in the formation of denominal verbs. The presence of this component can be argued from lexically-similar pairs of words such as can/jar, where only one undergoes the denominal verb formation process. The pragmatic analysis draws on work from Clark and Clark (1979), which provide an informal convention for successfully using denominal verbs. They also introduce restrictions based on specificity, synonymy, homophony, suppletion, entrenchment, and ancestry. To attempt to formalize the convention and restrictions presented in Clark and Clark's paper I implement more formalized notions of conversational and conventional implicatures in pragmatics. For the lexical analysis, I use Hale and Keyser's (1993) system of lexical argument structures. system provides a framework with which to test the hypothesis of a hidden lexical-semantic component on noun roots. They suggest that denominal verb formation follows the constraints of syntax. Despite this position, Hale and Keyser recognize the problem that not ever noun root becomes a denominal verb, which is not explained using their system. Finally, I consider possible ways to combine the two pragmatic and lexical approaches in a way that adequately explains the observed patterns of denominal verb formation. |
