A semantic approach to auxiliary selection with German verbs of motion

German manner-of-motion verbs can take both haben 'have' and sein 'be' as perfect auxiliaries. It has recently been proposed that, in these cases, auxiliary selection is determined by the feature [locomotion], where [+locomotion] triggers sein 'be' and [-locomotion] tri...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autor: Lewandowski, Wojciech
Tipo de recurso: artículo
Fecha de publicación:2018
País:España
Institución:Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona
Repositorio:Dipòsit Digital de Documents de la UAB
Idioma:inglés
OAI Identifier:oai:ddd.uab.cat:200421
Acceso en línea:https://ddd.uab.cat/record/200421
https://dx.doi.org/urn:doi:10.5565/rev/catjl.242
Access Level:acceso abierto
Palabra clave:Auxiliary selection
German
Manner-of-motion verbs
Semantics
Locomotion
Selecció d'auxiliar
Alemany
Verbs de manera de moviment
Semàntica
Locomoció
Descripción
Sumario:German manner-of-motion verbs can take both haben 'have' and sein 'be' as perfect auxiliaries. It has recently been proposed that, in these cases, auxiliary selection is determined by the feature [locomotion], where [+locomotion] triggers sein 'be' and [-locomotion] triggers haben 'have' (Randall 2007). In this paper, we explore the notion of locomotion from an empirical semantic perspective. We report the results of an acceptability judgment task and we show that some manner-of-motion verbs are more typically associated with [+locomotion] than others depending on the prominence of directionality involved in verb semantics. However, we argue that locomotion is not a property of verbs themselves but rather a property of constructions (Goldberg 1995), which impose a specific semantic construal on the verbs.