Author:

Abstract:

In Dutch, but also in English, an alternation between a direct and prepositional object pops up with a number of disparate verbs. Whereas some of these verbs appear to cluster together in semantically similar groups, such as verbs denoting a throwing or dragging motion (1), a feeling (2) or a human interaction (3), others do not seem to readily fit into any of such groups, such as (4), (5) or (6). The question then arises whether we are dealing with the same alternation between a fully abstract transitive and prepositional construction, or whether these verbs all instantiate different alternations between lower-level argument constructions. This ties into the more general theoretical debate between lexical and phrasal approaches to argument realization (see Müller and Wechsler (2014) and Boas (2014) for overviews). (1) Ik mors, gooi, sjouw, slinger, smijt, strooi, werp en zeul (met) de koffie. I spill, throw, lug, sling, fling, scatter, hurl and drag (with) the coffee. (2) Ik verlang (naar), vertrouw (op) en weersta (aan) haar. I long (for), trust (on) and withstand (to) her. (3) Ik bel, telefoneer, huw en trouw (met) hem. I call, phone, wed and marry (with) him. (4) Ik zoek (naar) koffie. I search (for) coffee. (5) Ik regeer (over) mijn koninkrijk. I rule (over) my kingdom. (6) Ik kies (voor) zekerheid. I choose (for) security. To investigate this, we will take a bottom-up approach to variation in argument realization. This means we will start at the level of the individual verbs, and investigate whether the same or similar factors determine the choice between the direct and prepositional object variant of several verbs. To get at possible meaning differences between the variants, we will employ Semantic Vector Spaces (Turney and Pantel 2010). This avoids having to a priori impose abstract meaning distinctions in a top-down fashion. More specifically, the alternation will be investigated by adapting the method introduced by Levshina and Heylen (2014) and further developed in Speelman, Heylen and Grondelaers (forthc.).