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Verb Classes and Aspect
Edited by Elisa Barrajón López, José Luis Cifuentes Honrubia and Susana Rodríguez Rosique
[IVITRA Research in Linguistics and Literature 9] 2015
► pp. 21–59

Event structure and lexical semantics in a scalar approach to actionality

This paper offers a scalar analysis of Russian verbal forms derived with the prefix pro-. The proposed approach is crucially based on two notions integrated into the Generative Lexicon framework: Dynamic Event Structure, a representation of the internal makeup of events in terms of subevents or phases which allows tracking the change of the arguments’ properties over time; and change function, which accounts for the different ways in which these properties may be affected (i.e., initiated, terminated, modified or left unchanged) in the course of the event. Special emphasis is placed on the role of scalar properties of the nominal arguments in the composition of change-of-state predicates.
Keywords: change function, Dynamic Event Structure, Qualia Structure, Russian prefixation, scalarity
Published online: 25 November 2015
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https://doi.org/10.1075/ivitra.9.02bat
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