The alternation strength of causative verbs

The alternation strength of causative verbs: a quantitative and qualitative analysis of the interaction between verb, theme and construction. Laurence Romain - UMR STL 8163 - Université Lille 3 NWASV II– 19/05/16 Gent

To what extent is the alternation part of a speaker’s knowledge of their language?

Laurence Romain - NWASV II - 19/05/16

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The alternation strength of causative verbs • The causative alternation • Alternation, constructions or ‘allostruction’? • The data: collection & coding • Distinctive Collexeme analysis • Theme overlap • Using distributional semantics to group Themes


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The causative alternation in English - The intransitive (non-causative) construction (Cx1) - The beer bottle clicked off his teeth and shattered on the cement. - The eggs broke as I tried to pick them up... - Reduce the tension, and the cable won’t snap.

- The transitive (causative) construction (Cx2) - Bullets shatter bottles and glasses all around him. - He’d broken a few eggs in the chicken coop. - "Rocket Roscoe" once delivered a ball so hard that it snapped a net cable at the U.S. Open.


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Alternation or construction? A brief overview of the literature on alternations


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Alternation, constructions & allostructions Alternation: information about the verb’s argument structure(s) is part of the meaning of the verb (subcategorization frames) Constructions: each Cx has its own meaning, Cx = FORM + MEANING Surface generalization hypothesis (Goldberg , 2002) Allostructions: (Cappelle, 2006; Perek, 2015) 2 instances of a same ‘constructeme’


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The data An overview of the corpus I used for this study


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The data Levin (1993) 355 verbs that alternate 30 verbs: BREAK, BEND, BURN, GROW, TURN Extracted from the Corpus Of Contemporary American English (COCA) Annotated for construction & theme


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The data Distinctive collexeme analysis: 12 verbs (break, crack, crush, shatter, snap, tear & bend, crease, crinkle, crumple, fold, wrinkle) Total: 5022 instances of Cx1 & Cx2 Examples: Cx1: His fingers ached, and two of them wouldn't bend. Cx2: He’s unable to bend [his fingers] much, and not without pain. Laurence Romain - NWASV II - 19/05/16

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Measuring the alternation strength of causative verbs The methodology: Distinctive collexeme analysis (Gries & Stefanowitsch, 2004)


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The alternation strength of causative verbs Are causative verbs significantly attracted to one of the two constructions? And to what extent? ØDistinctive collexeme analysis R Programme: Gries, Stefan Th. 2007. Coll.analysis 3.2. A program for R for Windows 2.x. Laurence Romain - NWASV II - 19/05/16

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The alternation strength of causative verbs

Cx1 Cx2 Column totals

break 128 572 700

Other verbs 463 1236 1699

Row totals 591 1808 2399

Table 1. The distribution of break in Cx1 and Cx2 in my BREAK corpus (tokens)


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The alternation strength of causative verbs break

Other verbs

Row totals

Cx1

83

282

365

Cx2

208

598

806

Column totals 291

880

1171

Table 1. The distribution of break in Cx1 and Cx2 in my BREAK corpus (type) Laurence Romain - NWASV II - 19/05/16

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The alternation strength of causative verbs • Evaluation of the method: • Gives an idea of the distribution of verbs between 2 constructions • Type rather than token count shows less extreme results • But… does not take themes into account


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Theme overlap Towards a more qualitative measure of the alternation strength of causative verbs


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Theme overlap Idea introduced by Lemmens (ms) I was breaking a cardinal rule. (Cx2) … as dawn breaks in Afghanistan... (Cx1) his voice cracked because he was beginning to understand. (Cx1) She could run the combinations until she cracked the code. (Cx2)


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Theme overlap Evaluation of the method: Gives a good idea of the extent to which verbs alternate based on the Themes they are used in combination with. Does not say much about the meaning of each construction: which Themes occur in Cx1 only? Which in Cx2? And… many different themes, what do they have in common?


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Using distributional semantics to group themes


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Using distributional semantics to group Themes Bubbles, TVs, breadsticks, and hearts break in very different ways and with very different consequences. (Goldberg, 2001: 516) • Examples: limbs: arm, ankle, wrist, leg… • They all break in a very similar way but differently from dawn, story & voice • The number of different Themes (273 types occurring with break) • -> hard to see the big picture if we look at Themes individually


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Using distributional semantics to group Themes You shall know a word by the company it keeps. (Firth, J. R. 1957:11) Analysis run for each Theme that occurs at least twice in our corpus (for each verb). Perek’s (2016) analysis of “V the hell out of NP” Laurence Romain - NWASV II - 19/05/16

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Using distributional semantics to group Themes 500 instances of each Theme from COCA (sample) Lemmatized using TreeTagger, then analysed for collocates with AntConc Creation of a semantic space with DISSECT


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Using distributional semantics to group Themes body

bone

butt

figure

hip

near

pubic

stretch

extend

place

straight

ankle

foot

hand

head

outstretch

schedule

surgery

leg

right

ankle 6.0 4.0 2.0 2.0 2.0 2.0 2.0 2.0 2.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 leg

3.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 2.0 0.0 3.0 3.0 3.0 3.0 2.0 2.0 2.0 2.0 2.0 2.0 2.0 2.0 A co-occurrence matrix for ankle & leg (sample)


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Using distributional semantics to group Themes


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Using distributional semantics to group Themes Pairing distributional semantics with WordNet

A screenshot of a WordNet search for shatter


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Concrete Themes that occur with shatter in Cx2 Laurence Romain - NWASV II - 19/05/16

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Using distributional semantics to group Themes • shatter: 8 groups out of 16 that alternate (50%) (against 13%) • Cx1 only: CREATURE, HEART, VOICE • Cx2 only: LIMIT, BELIEF, PEACE, SILENCE, MISC.

• break: 9 groups out of 37 that alternate (21%) (against 7%) • Cx1 only: THINGS THAT APPEAR, DAWN, VOICE • Cx2 only: ASS, BELIEF, CAMP, CODE, COMMITMENT, CYCLE, FAST, GROUND, HOLD, HORSE, ICE, ILLUSION, LIMIT, CONNECTION, LOCK, SEAL, RANKS, RESTRAINTS, RULE, SURFACE


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Distribution of groups of themes with shatter in Cx1 Laurence Romain - NWASV II - 19/05/16

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Distribution of groups of themes with shatter in Cx2 Laurence Romain - NWASV II - 19/05/16

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Preliminary conclusions • Grouping Themes semantically yields different results • Higher alternation strength (at least for shatter & break) • Gives a better idea of the kind of Themes that alternate: a more qualitative measure

• Gives a better idea of the meaning of each construction, and therefore to what extent the alternation can be part of a speaker’s knowledge of their language. Laurence Romain - NWASV II - 19/05/16

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Thank you for your attention Laurence Romain - UMR STL 8163 - Université Lille 3 [email protected]


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