Constraining the Combinatorial Patterns of Japanese V-V Compounds: An Analysis in Dynamic Event Semantics

要旨

In this article we investigate the argument structure of Japanese V–V compounds from the perspective of Dynamic Event Semantics (Naumann 2001). The argument structure of a verb is defined as a linearly ordered set of so‐called dynamic roles. Dynamic roles differ from thematic relations in characterizing participants in terms of sets of results that are brought about in the course of an event. The patterns of argument sharing found in Japanese V–V compounds are shown to derive from compatibility constraints on the different results that are assigned to a shared argument. In addition, it is argued that the phenomenon of argument blocking follows from the Subject‐Head Constraint (Gamerschlag 2000, 2002). This constraint requires the highest argument (= subject) of the head verb to be the highest argument of the compound.

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