Motion Events: Syntactic- Semantic Mapping
Sameerah Tawfeeq Saeed
Abstract
In this paperI examine the syntactic and semantic properties of events and, more specifically, events that involve
motion verbs. I propose a semantic-syntactic analysis which combines insights from Dowty’s (1979) and
Rothstein’s (2004) semantic approaches and Ramchand’s (2008) syntactic approach. I claim that the semantic
components of an event structure can be reflected in certain functional heads in a VP extended structure. More
precisely, I argue that the BECOME event involved in Accomplishment and Achievement events as proposed in
Dowty’s (1979) and Rothstein’s (2004) semantic approaches is parallel to ResP in Ramchand (2008). Moreover, I
distinguish between what counts as a BECOME element and culmination and their syntactic representations.
Full Text: PDF