Selected Papers from the Fourteenth International ... - STIBA Malang

166 Bettelou Los
. Grammaticalization
.1 Path predicates grammaticalize
One aspect in which particles do differ from predicates, and which must be of
primary importance in charting the grammaticalization process they have undergone,
is the fact that particles show extensive semantic bleaching compared
to predicates. Consider the following Lexical Conceptual Structure as typical
of (resultative) predicates (from Spencer & Zaretskaya 1998, in turn based on
Jackendoff 1990), with (17) illustrating a predicate construction as in (7a):
(17) [CAUSE [ACT (x)], BECOME [W(y)]], by [V(x)]
(18) [CAUSE [ACT (the dog)], BECOME [awake(me)]], by [poking(the dog)]
The by-phrase in this notation equals the verbal subevent in Goldberg & Jackendoff
’s (2004) notation above (in (15)), and particle verbs fit into this means or
manner phrase with varying degrees of acceptability, in a large part depending on
the verb (for non-causative verbs, e.g., unaccusatives, the LCS needs to be pruned
somewhat (cf. (16a)–(16c) above)). If we classify the verbs that occur in particleverb
combinations in terms of whether they make the best fit in an LCS like (16)
or (17), we find that verbs expressing manner make the best fit:
(19) i. transitives
ii. unergatives: chop, knock, laugh, sing, work
iii. ‘Manner of motion’ unaccusatives: run, lope, sprint, dash, rush, hurry,
scurry, scramble (Slobin 2005: 316)
iv. denominal verbs, derived from the instrument used in causing the object
y to reach the state W: boot out, bowl over, branch out, brick up, buckle up,
elbow out, fork out, hand over, pan out, patch up
v. deadjectival/ denominal verbs constituting a conversion of the state W
itself: back off/away, brazen out, cheer up, clear up/out/off/away, crack up,
free up, gloss over, open up/out, parcel out, pretty up, round up/off 5
vi. ‘Light’ verbs:
a. transitive: get, keep, let, make, place, put, set
b. unaccusative: come, go
Many transitives that express some activity like cooking and poking in (7) fit nonproblematically
in the manner slot, and the same goes for the intransitive unergatives,
in (ii).
(20) a. He chopped the tree down
b. [CAUSE [ACT (he)], BECOME [down (tree)]], by [chopping(he)]
5. Conversions as in (iv) and (v) are a much-noted phenomenon with particle-verbs; see e.g.,
Lipka (1972: 98–114).