Syntax-semantics mapping of locative arguments

Copyright 2012 by Seungho Nam 26th Pacific Asia Conference on Language,Information and Computation pages 473–480 Syntax-semantics mapping of locative arguments Seungho Nam Seoul National University 599 Gwanak-ro, Gwanak-gu Seoul, KOREA nam@snu.ac.kr Abstract This paper proposes a syntax-semantics correspondence of locative expressions: This proposal is based on the syntactic hierarchy among three locative structures (PPs, VPs, and verbal affixes) and the semantic hierarchy among four locative arguments (Goal, Source, Symmetric Path, Stative Location). As for the syntactic hierarchy, the verbal affixes are closer to the head verb than the locative/path verbs are, and the locative/path verbs than the locative PPs. As for the semantic hierarchy, the following four arguments form a hierarchy due to their semantic closeness to the motion event: Goal > S-Path > Source > St-Location. (cf. Nam 1995, 2004) We argue for this correspondence claim by identifying some crucial typological implications holding between the syntactic/semantic hierarchies. 1 Introduction Natural language uses various constructions to express spatial properties and relations. Languages like English and Russian employ prepositional phrases (PPs) to denote locations or trajectory of movement, but some languages like Kinyarwanda and Swahili use an applicative prefix or a separate locative verb. This paper, based on Nam’s (1995) semantic typology of locatives, aims to characterize the formal (syntactic/morphological) structures of locative expressions in natural language, and identifies typological implications among the different types of locatives. Thus, for example, we show that locative PPs are relatively free to scramble (fronting/extraposing) but locative VPs are not; and that if goal arguments can be expressed in a PP in a language L, then source arguments can, too. Nam (1995) proposes a semantic typology of locative expressions in English, where belong five classes of locatives as follows:  Goal locatives: John ran to the office. – denote an ending place of a movement [PPs with to, into, onto]  Source locatives: John came from the office. – denote a starting place of a movement [PPs with from]  Symmetric Path locatives:1 John ran across the street. – denote a symmetric relation between the start point and the end point [PPs with across, over, through, past, around]  Directional locatives: John ran towards the office. – denote a direction of a movement [PPs with towards, up, down]  Stative Locatives: John ran on the street. – denote a place where an event take place without location change [PPs with at, on, in, in front of, above] The paper will show that the above semantic typology forms a coherent hierarchy among the different locative types, and further claims that the semantic hierarchy is closely linked to the syntactic hierarchy of the locatives. That is, the closer semantically is a locative to an event of a 1 Nam (1995) calls them “symmetric” since the relation between source and goal is symmetric with respect to the reference object (landmark), thus symmetric locatives do not specify an inherent direction between the two regions. 473 motion verb, the closer syntactically is the locative to the motion verb. For example, …

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