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Part of
Give Constructions across Languages
Edited by Myriam Bouveret
[Constructional Approaches to Language 29] 2021
► pp. 147–173

Chapter 6
Aoj ‘give’ in Khmer

Meaning extensions and construction types

| Sorbonne Nouvelle University-Paris 3
The lexeme for give in Khmer, aoj, is highly polyfunctional (Robert 2004, Heine 2013, Do-Hurinville & Hancil 2015) and it frequently occurs in verb serialization (Durie 1997, Aikhenvald & Dixon 2006) :
Jau:k
take
samla:
soup
tev
go
aoj
give
chkae
dog
si:
eat
tev !
then
‘Give the soup to the dog, then!’
In this example we find three verbs in a row which all serve to describe a single macro-event (an event of transfer), which gets decomposed in Khmer into three subevents: “taking the soup, going somewhere with it and giving it to the dog.” This pattern of lexicalization is particularly frequent for verbs describing a path of motion, and it is often accounted for using both cultural and cognitive principles (Durie 1997, Vittrant 2015); in this chapter we insist on the cognitive and structural (i.e., constructional) aspects of the verb aoj. After providing a summary of the main uses of aoj, our research questions will be the following: the first and most difficult issue is that of categorization; according to the function it fulfills in the clause/sentence, aoj is called a verb (lexical/main verb, pre-auxiliary verb, causative verb, modal verb, etc.), a preposition, a conjunction, etc. We need to look for other types of solutions, and one such solution will be to endorse a constructional treatment (of aoj) in line with Croft (2013)’s proposals. This will in turn allow us to explore an important point raised by Newman (1996) in his extensive study of give verbs, which is that the constructional type of the language (namely, the omnipresence of SVCs) favors the polyfunctionality of aoj, compared to English give or French donner, which are far less polysemous. Finally, we tackle the thorny issue of the meaning contribution of aoj in the constructions it occurs in.
Keywords: aoj , causative construction , light verbs , serial verbs , polyfunctionality
Article outline
  • Introduction
  • 1.Main uses and problems of categorization
    • 1.1Ditransitive and benefactive
    • 1.2 Causative, permissive
    • 1.3 Purposive
    • 1.4Causative resultative
    • 1.5Other uses
  • 2.A case of grammaticalization?
    • 2.1Grammaticalization and polyfunctionality
      • Benefactive: (V1) AOJ recipient
      • Purposive-causative: Subject1GO AOJ subject2 V2
    • 2.2“Chesherization”
  • 3.Method and discussion
    • 3.1Monosemy
    • 3.2Transfer as a sanctioning sense
    • 3.3Meaning extension to causation and purpose
    • 3.4Causative-resultative meaning extensions
  • Conclusion
  • Note
  • References
Published online: 10 March 2021
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/cal.29.06cor
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