論文の英文要旨

Summary

論文題目
Title

氏名
NameArgument Extension with lassen and free datives basedon “HAVE”-relation between individuals and events:
A case study of motion verbs in German

Miho Takahashi

This study is concerned with two types of argument-extending construction inGerman, i.e., syntactic causatives with the verb lassen and constructions with freedatives, and particularly targets verbs of motion. The aims are to address possible
interpretations of each construction and to explore the semantic constraints on
extension of the verb’s argument structures by introducing a new argument (the agent
as subject or the dative participant). Causative constructions with the verb lassen(lassen-constructions) and constructions with free datives (dative-constructions) inchange of location contexts can denote a semantically similar meaning: They can both
express “unexpected events” initiated by the new argument (e.g., Ich ließ die Flasche
auf den Boden fallen./Die Flasche fiel mir auf den Boden. ‘The bottle fell and I caused
this unintentionally.’). In contrasting these two types of construction, lexical operations
that extend the argument structures of verbs are investigated.
This thesis consists of eight chapters, which are summarized as follows.
Chapter 1 introduces the issues with which this research is concerned andprovides an outline of the thesis.
Chapter 2 addresses the two types of argument-extending construction, i.e.,
lassen-constructions and dative-constructions. Firstly, I review the descriptions andusages of lassen-constructions in dictionaries and previous works. Secondly, I
elaborate the meanings and functions of free datives based on several previous studies.
I then remark that free datives are essentially regarded as expressions of “affectedness”ibetween the predicate verb and the dative argument and therefore cover a wide
spectrum of meanings from possessive datives to benefactive/adversative datives.
Finally, I point out the semantic similarity between the two types of construction(lassen-constructions and dative constructions), providing specific examples of several
motion verbs.
Chapter 3 demonstrates the possible interpretations of lassen-constructions anddative-constructions with motion verbs. In this chapter, I also summarize several
studies of German motion verbs. German motion verbs are mainly divided into two
different classes in classical works, that is, verbs that describe active controlled motion
by “internal cause” (e.g., laufen ‘run’ and schwimmen ‘swim’) and verbs that express
not-active, uncontrolled motion by “external cause” (e.g., fallen ‘fall’). Following theliterature review, I discuss certain correlations that exist between the possible
interpretations of lassen-constructions and dative-constructions and the semantic
classes of motion verbs.
Chapter 4 presents the results of research based on examples collected fromcorpora (Corpora of the Institute of German Language). The main purpose of theresearch is to examine the correlation between classes of motion verbs and possible
interpretations of lassen-constructions (“indirect causation,” “intentional causation,”and “unintentional causation”) and dative constructions (the “affectedness” reading andthe “potential causation” reading) addressed in Chapter 3, and to explore semantic andsyntactic constraints on interpretation. The target of the research is 13 selected motion
verbs (fahren, fallen, fliegen, klettern, kriechen, laufen, reiten, rollen, rudern, rutschen,schwimmen, segeln, springen) and the total number of examples collected from
corpora is 551 (311 lassen-constructions and 240 dative-constructions). The results
show that motion verb classes are related to interpretations of both types ofargument-extending construction: the “intentional/unintentional causation” readings oflassen-construction and the “potential causation” reading of dative-constructions areobserved only in the “uncontrolled motion” context. A close inspection of results also
reveals that the potential interpretations of both constructions are closely related tospatial path arguments (source, goal, path), which appear with motion verbs.
Chapter 5 introduces the theoretical background of the following two chapters.
The discussions in Chapters 6 and 7 are theoretically based on the “lexicaldecomposition” approach, which attempts to explore the relationship between lexicon(verb meaning) and grammar (sentence structure) by assuming that verbs aresemantically complex and can be decomposed into abstract predicates, such asii

BECOME, CAUSE, DO, and so on. This approach is often called “Lexical Semantics”
and has focused on the interface between syntax and semantics. In this chapter, I
summarize several previous studies from Jackendoff (1990), Pustejovsky (1991),
Levin/Rappaport Hovav (1995), and Wunderlich (1997a), which are regarded asimportant frameworks in this field and introduce the basic predicates used in thelexical decomposition approach.
Chapter 6 deals with the semantic structures of motion verbs in German. Firstly, I
review the lexical semantic structures of motion verbs proposed by recent works,
which adopt the lexical decomposition approach. Secondly, I discuss the semanticpredicates of motion events, and finally, I propose the semantic structures of motion
verbs, which correspond to the different classes of motion events denoted by the verbs,
i.e., “controlled motion” and “uncontrolled motion.”
Chapter 7 is devoted to the formalization of lassen-constructions anddative-constructions with verbs of motion. In the first section of this chapter, I willaddress the model of lexical operation concerning free datives in German, which
extends the argument structure of the base verbs. The second section of this chapter
presents the mechanism of argument extension as a composition of semantic predicates,
which is adopted in the analysis in the following sections. The third and fourth sections
are concerned with the analysis of dative-constructions and lassen-constructions. In thefifth section, the results of the analysis in this chapter are summarized. To formalize
the dative-constructions with motion verbs, the model of “possessor extension”
proposed by Wunderlich (2000) is introduced, by which the possession predicate(POSS) is added as a further complement to the verb. I reconsider this model in orderto capture the wide range of meanings of free datives and show that the possible
interpretations of dative-constructions can be appropriately obtained by replacing thepredicate “POSS,” used for possessive relations between individuals in Wunderlich’s
model, with “HAVE” for affect relations between individuals and events. Furthermore,I argue that the “potential causation” reading of dative-constructions with motion verbs
is the result of the composition of the base verb’s predicate (CAUSE) and added
predicate HAVE. Afterwards, I discuss the formalization of lassen-constructions andpropose two types of argument-increasing operation: Lassen-constructions with motion
verbs should be differently analyzed depending on the base verb’s meanings(”controlled motion” or “uncontrolled motion”).
Finally, Chapter 8 presents a summary of this study and offers overall
conclusions.
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