Holistic interpretation in locative alternation – Evidence from self-paced reading

Holistic interpretation in locative alternation: Evidence from self-paced reading Rui Cao The University of Tokyo / JSPS Research Fellow 3-8-1, Komaba, Meguroku, Tokyo 153-8902, Japan cao@phiz.c.u-tokyo.ac.jp Abstract In English and Japanese, verbs like smear and load can appear in two alternate variants while expressing nearly the same meaning. It has been argued that there is a semantic difference be- tween locatum-as-object variant and location-as- object variant: location-as-object variant im- poses holistic interpretation, but locatum-as-ob- ject variant allows both partitive interpretation and holistic interpretation. In this paper, a self- paced reading experiment was conducted to in- vestigate whether there is a preference of inter- pretation (partitive / holistic) in locatum-as- object variant. The results indicate that the pro- cessing difficulty occurs when the holistic inter- pretation is canceled regardless of the variant type, but the interaction between VARIANT TYPE and CANCELLATION OF HOLISTIC INTERPRETATION was not found. The results suggest that the holistic interpretation is pre- ferred not only in the location-as-object variant but also in the locatum-as-object variant. Fur- thermore, besides the preference of interpreta- tion, the significant main effect observed at the verb region demonstrates that the processing of locatum-as-object variant is easier than location- as-object variant, which aligns with the argu- ment in Aoki (2019). 1 Introduction As shown in (1) and (2), verbs like smear and load can appear in two alternate variants while express- ing nearly the same meaning. The phenomenon is called locative alternation, which can be found across languages (Fukui et al., 1985; Pinker, 1989; Levin, 1993; Goldberg, 1995; Maruta, 1997; Okutsu, 1981; Iwata, 2008 among others). (1) a. Bill smeared paint onto the wall (locatum-as-object variant) b. Bill smeared the wall with paint (location-as-object variant) (2) a. John loaded hay onto the wagon (locatum-as-object variant) b. John loaded the wagon with hay (location-as-object variant) Pinker (1989) argues that a necessary criterion for a verb to participate in the locative alternation is that the verb allows the description of both a type of motion of the locatum argument and an end state of the location argument. Sentences like (1a) and (2a), in which the locatum (paint, hay) is the direct object of the verb (smear, load) are called locatum-as-ob- ject variant. Sentences like (1b) and (2b), in which the location (wall, wagon) is the direct object of the verb (smear, load) are called location-as-object var- iant. These differences in the presentation of the ar- guments also affect the meaning of the constructions. Anderson (1971) first argued that there is a semantic difference between the two vari- ants: whether the whole of something is affected by the action described by the sentence, or just a part of it is affected. To denote the difference, he coined the terms holistic interpretation and partitive inter- pretation (Anderson, 1971: 389). For instance, (1b) imposes the interpretation that the whole wall was painted but (1a) doesn’t. Therefore, we can say that (1b) has holistic interpretation and (1a) allows both holistic and partitive interpretations. Previous studies Apart from English, according …

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