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Part of
Word Classes: Nature, typology and representations
Edited by Raffaele Simone and Francesca Masini
[Current Issues in Linguistic Theory 332] 2014
► pp. 37–50

Classes of creation verbs

| University of Pavia

This paper introduces a taxonomy for creation verbs consisting in two main classes: create verbs and verbs of derived creation. Each class has subclasses which are discussed in detail. I argue that while verbs belonging to the first class have creation as their core sense, verbs of derived creation either have another sense as primary or are underspecified, and take on a creation reading only in verb-argument composition. The overall goal of the paper is to support this distinction through a corpus-informed qualitative analysis of the semantic and syntactic properties of a target set of verbs belonging to both classes. Particularly, starting from intuitive semantic groupings, I pin down the syntactic features shared by verbs belonging to each group and propose a classification at the syntax/semantic interface. Results of the analysis show that the proposed distinction is empirically grounded.

Published online: 24 September 2014
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https://doi.org/10.1075/cilt.332.03jez
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