This paper investigates the mechanism for nominative/accusative Case alternations in the siph-ta ‘want-to’ construction in Korean. I argue that the Case alternations in the Korean siph-ta construction are motivated by the peculiar property of siph- that it has dual argument structures and restructuring properties. Specifically, the structural Case on the embedded object is determined by 1) the type of the matrix vP that siph- takes—vP(DO) or vP(BE) - and 2) the presence/absence of the functional category responsible for accusative Case checking, which is selected by the matrix predicate siph-. In so doing, it is demonstrated that the dual argument structure analysis can be extended to account for the same type of Case alternations exhibited by Korean psych-verbs as well as the incompatibility between a nominative object and an embedded psych-verb in the siph-ta construction.

This paper presents the lexical component of the START Question Answering system developed at the MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. START is able to interpret correctly a wide range of semantic relationships associated with alternate expressions of the arguments of verbs. The design of the system takes advantage of the results of recent linguistic research into the structure of the lexicon, allowing START to attain a broader range of coverage than many existing systems.

This dissertation is an analysis of the morphosyntax of the Turkish causative construction within the framework of Distributed Morphology (DM). It is an attempt to capture a range of different phenomena in a principled way within this framework. Important aspects of DM for the analysis herein include the syntactic derivation of words; the existence of an acategorial Root from which all words are syntactically derived; and the late (post-syntactic) insertion of Vocabulary Items (VIs) into terminal syntactic nodes. A distinction is made between two different levels of causative: Root (or inner) causatives, and productive (or outer) causatives. Root causatives are minimal structures in which a Root phrase (comprising a Root and its nominal complement) is merged with a verbalizing head, little-v (Harley 1995; Chomsky 1995, 2001; Marantz 1997). This domain is the locus of idiosyncratic allomorphy, and it is where the traditionally recognized ‘irregular’ causatives suffixes are found. In addition, another type of idiosyncratic Root-adjacent phenomenon is identified in this study: independent exponence of the verbalizing feature and of the causative feature (CAUS). This is analyzed as CAUS fission: the result of a post-syntactic operation that splits the terminal node [v, CAUS] into two positions of exponence. Productive causatives are larger structures in which a vP is merged with a CAUS head. The identification of the Root causative head as v.CAUS but the productive causative head as simply CAUS is a departure from Harley's (2008) analysis of Japanese causatives, and is a new proposal in this work. Following Pylkkänen (2002, 2008), the external argument is not introduced by either v.CAUS or CAUS, but by a higher projection, Voice. This innovation makes it possible to model syntactic differences between Japanese and Turkish productive causatives. Japanese causatives embed Voice (i.e., they are ‘phase-selecting,’ in Pylkkänen's terminology) while Turkish causatives embed little-v (i.e., they are ‘verb-selecting’). Hence, the former behave as two clauses with regard to a range of diagnostics, while the latter behave as a single clause. Furthermore, it is proposed that productive causatives do not exhibit syntactic recursion, and that cases of causative iteration are actually morphological reduplication.

O propósito deste estudo é descrever e analisar o comportamento de sentenças médias no português do Brasil (PB), tais como Dissertação de mestrado não se escreve fácil e Cachecol tricota rápido. Muito têm-se discutido a respeito das construções médias, em diversas línguas, visto que elas agregam em si uma complexa relação entre a sintaxe, a semântica e, para alguns, o léxico. Foi a extensa bibliografia e a sempre presente discordância entre autores a respeito dessas construções que despertou nosso interesse em trabalhar com esse tema. Entretanto, descrever as construções médias do português Brasileiro revelou-se uma tarefa das mais árduas. Explica-se: há dois fatores de grande importância para a descrição dessas sentenças que estão em aparente mudança nesse idioma. O primeiro desses fenômenos é a mudança no uso dos clíticos que, de modo geral, está diminuindo em nossa língua (Tarallo (1983), Nunes (1990, 1995), Cyrino (1992, 2003), Fernandes (2000). O segundo fenômeno é o fato de o português do Brasil estar passando por um processo generalizado de mudança na classe dos verbos de alternância transitiva, já apontado na literatura (Whitaker-Franchi (1989), Chagas (2000), Viotti & Negrão (2006)). Tendo como perspectiva teórica a Morfologia Distribuída, um dos recentes desenvolvimentos da Gramática Gerativa, acreditamos poder dar um tratamento unicamente sintático, mais enxuto e uniforme do que as propostas de análise até hoje sugeridas. Fundamentando-nos no trabalho de Marantz (1997), no qual o autor propõe que uma interpretação agentiva de um determinado sintagma pode ser devida, não somente à presença de um núcleo verbal, mas também a informações sintático-semânticas da própria raiz participante da construção. além de baseando-nos na combinação das características sintático-semânticas das raízes envolvidas na construção. Também, Alexiadou, Anagnostopoulou e Schäfer (2005) hipotetizam, seguindo Kratzer (2002), em favor de decompor os verbos alternantes em uma raiz, um núcleo de causa e um núcleo de voz. Os dados do PB, vistos pela perspectiva da Morfologia Distribuída, nos permitirão ir adiante nas pesquisas sobre o tema específico que desenvolveremos neste trabalho e, ao mesmo tempo, trarão novas evidências e questionamentos a respeito da teoria que apóia este projeto / The purpose of this study is to describe and analyse the Middle Construction in Brazilian Portuguese, such as Dissertação de mestrado não escreve fácil and Cachecol tricota rápido. Linguists, working with data form several languages, have discussed extensively about these constructions, because they aggregate in them a complex relationship between syntax, semantics and, in some analysis, the lexicon. It was the comprehensive bibliography and the presence of great discrepancy between authors - about these constructions that awakened our interest in working with this theme. However, describing these constructions in Brazilian Portuguese proved to be one of the most arduous task, since there are two factors of great importance to the description of those sentences that are in apparent change in our language. The first of these phenomena is the change in the use of clitics, which, in general, is decreasing in Brazilian Portuguese (Tarallo (1983), Nunes (1990, 1995), Cyrino (1992, 2003), Fernandes (2000)). The second phenomenon is the fact that this language is going through a process of widespread change in the class of alternating transitive verbs, already identified in the literature (Whitaker-Franchi (1989), Chagas (2000), Viotti & Pollini (2006)). Having as theoretical framework a theory of the architecture of grammar known as Distributed Morphology, one of the recent developments of Generative Grammar (Chomsky, 1960, 1965), we believe we can offer a syntactic treatment, more economical and more uniform than the proposals of analysis suggested so far. Our analysis is fundamented in the proposal from Marantz (1997), who argues that an agentive interpretation for a given phrase may be due, not only to the syntactic presence of a verbal head, but also to the presence of relevant syntactic-semantic features of the root. Also, Alexiadou, Anagnostopoulou and Schäfer (2005) hypothesizes, along with Kratzer (2000), in favor of decomposing verbal meaning in a root, a causation head and a Voice head. The data coming from Brazilian Portuguese middle constructions, seen by the perspective of Distributed Morphology, can help the research on this specific topic to develop and, at the same time, bring new evidence and questioning about the theory that supports this project

O propósito deste estudo é descrever e analisar o comportamento de sentenças médias no português do Brasil (PB), tais como Dissertação de mestrado não se escreve fácil e Cachecol tricota rápido. Muito têm-se discutido a respeito das construções médias, em diversas línguas, visto que elas agregam em si uma complexa relação entre a sintaxe, a semântica e, para alguns, o léxico. Foi a extensa bibliografia e a sempre presente discordância entre autores a respeito dessas construções que despertou nosso interesse em trabalhar com esse tema. Entretanto, descrever as construções médias do português Brasileiro revelou-se uma tarefa das mais árduas. Explica-se: há dois fatores de grande importância para a descrição dessas sentenças que estão em aparente mudança nesse idioma. O primeiro desses fenômenos é a mudança no uso dos clíticos que, de modo geral, está diminuindo em nossa língua (Tarallo (1983), Nunes (1990, 1995), Cyrino (1992, 2003), Fernandes (2000). O segundo fenômeno é o fato de o português do Brasil estar passando por um processo generalizado de mudança na classe dos verbos de alternância transitiva, já apontado na literatura (Whitaker-Franchi (1989), Chagas (2000), Viotti & Negrão (2006)). Tendo como perspectiva teórica a Morfologia Distribuída, um dos recentes desenvolvimentos da Gramática Gerativa, acreditamos poder dar um tratamento unicamente sintático, mais enxuto e uniforme do que as propostas de análise até hoje sugeridas. Fundamentando-nos no trabalho de Marantz (1997), no qual o autor propõe que uma interpretação agentiva de um determinado sintagma pode ser devida, não somente à presença de um núcleo verbal, mas também a informações sintático-semânticas da própria raiz participante da construção. além de baseando-nos na combinação das características sintático-semânticas das raízes envolvidas na construção. Também, Alexiadou, Anagnostopoulou e Schäfer (2005) hipotetizam, seguindo Kratzer (2002), em favor de decompor os verbos alternantes em uma raiz, um núcleo de causa e um núcleo de voz. Os dados do PB, vistos pela perspectiva da Morfologia Distribuída, nos permitirão ir adiante nas pesquisas sobre o tema específico que desenvolveremos neste trabalho e, ao mesmo tempo, trarão novas evidências e questionamentos a respeito da teoria que apóia este projeto / The purpose of this study is to describe and analyse the Middle Construction in Brazilian Portuguese, such as Dissertação de mestrado não escreve fácil and Cachecol tricota rápido. Linguists, working with data form several languages, have discussed extensively about these constructions, because they aggregate in them a complex relationship between syntax, semantics and, in some analysis, the lexicon. It was the comprehensive bibliography and the presence of great discrepancy between authors - about these constructions that awakened our interest in working with this theme. However, describing these constructions in Brazilian Portuguese proved to be one of the most arduous task, since there are two factors of great importance to the description of those sentences that are in apparent change in our language. The first of these phenomena is the change in the use of clitics, which, in general, is decreasing in Brazilian Portuguese (Tarallo (1983), Nunes (1990, 1995), Cyrino (1992, 2003), Fernandes (2000)). The second phenomenon is the fact that this language is going through a process of widespread change in the class of alternating transitive verbs, already identified in the literature (Whitaker-Franchi (1989), Chagas (2000), Viotti & Pollini (2006)). Having as theoretical framework a theory of the architecture of grammar known as Distributed Morphology, one of the recent developments of Generative Grammar (Chomsky, 1960, 1965), we believe we can offer a syntactic treatment, more economical and more uniform than the proposals of analysis suggested so far. Our analysis is fundamented in the proposal from Marantz (1997), who argues that an agentive interpretation for a given phrase may be due, not only to the syntactic presence of a verbal head, but also to the presence of relevant syntactic-semantic features of the root. Also, Alexiadou, Anagnostopoulou and Schäfer (2005) hypothesizes, along with Kratzer (2000), in favor of decomposing verbal meaning in a root, a causation head and a Voice head. The data coming from Brazilian Portuguese middle constructions, seen by the perspective of Distributed Morphology, can help the research on this specific topic to develop and, at the same time, bring new evidence and questioning about the theory that supports this project

(in English): Focal point of presented thesis is concurence of certain lexico-semantic alternations, more specifically of the locative ones. Opening chapters deal with their definition and conception in theoretical frames of FGP and CxG. Following passages concentrate on specification of alternating contructions, their concurence and semantical restriction of alternating verbs. The second, core chapter of the thesis presents a corpus-based, quantitative and qualitative study of several Czech alternating verbs (cpát, balit, nakládat, napouštět, nalévat and plnit). It deals mainly with the question of distrubition of each construction and alternation capacity of aforementioned verbs. It verificates some hypotheses concerning pronominality, number and grammatical complexity of arguments. At the same time it aspires to bring a few new points and perspectives into Czech locative alternation discourse.

A criação de recursos linguístico-computacionais de base, como é o caso dos léxicos computacionais, é um dos focos da área de Processamento de Línguas Naturais (PLN). Porém, a maioria dos recursos léxicos computacionais existentes é específica da língua inglesa. Dentre os recursos já desenvolvidos para a língua inglesa, tem-se a VerbNet, que é um léxico com informações semânticas e sintáticas dos verbos do inglês, independente de domínio, construído com base nas classes verbais de Levin, além de possuir mapeamentos para a WordNet de Princeton (WordNet). Considerando que há poucos estudos computacionais sobre as classes de Levin, que é a base da VerbNet, para línguas diferentes do inglês, e dada a carência de um léxico para o português nos moldes da VerbNet do inglês, este trabalho teve como objetivo a criação de um recurso léxico para o português do Brasil (chamado VerbNet.Br), semelhante à VerbNet. A construção manual destes recursos geralmente é inviável devido ao tempo gasto e aos erros inseridos pelo autor humano. Portanto, há um grande esforço na área para a criação destes recursos apoiada por técnicas computacionais. Uma técnica reconhecida e bastante usada é o uso de aprendizado de máquina em córpus para extrair informação linguística. A outra é o uso de recursos já existentes para outras línguas, em geral o inglês, visando à construção de um novo recurso alinhado, aproveitando-se de atributos multilíngues/cross-linguísticos (cross-linguistic) (como é o caso da classificação verbal de Levin). O método proposto neste mestrado para a construção da VerbNet.Br é genérico, porque pode ser utilizado para a construção de recursos semelhantes para outras línguas, além do português do Brasil. Além disso, futuramente, será possível estender este recurso via criação de subclasses de conceitos. O método para criação da VerbNet.Br é fundamentado em quatro etapas: três automáticas e uma manual. Porém, também foram realizados experimentos sem o uso da etapa manual, constatando-se, com isso, que ela pode ser descartada sem afetar a precisão e abrangência dos resultados. A avaliação do recurso criado foi realizada de forma intrínseca qualitativa e quantitativa. A avaliação qualitativa consistiu: (a) da análise manual de algumas classes da VerbNet, criando um gold standard para o português do Brasil; (b) da comparação do gold standard criado com os resultados da VerbNet.Br, obtendo resultados promissores, por volta de 60% de f-measure; e (c) da comparação dos resultados da VerbNet.Br com resultados de agrupamento de verbos, concluindo que ambos os métodos apresentam resultados similares. A avaliação quantitativa considerou a taxa de aceitação dos membros das classes da VerbNet.Br, apresentando resultados na faixa de 90% de aceitação dos membros em cada classe. Uma das contribuições deste mestrado é a primeira versão da VerbNet.Br, que precisa de validação linguística, mas que já contém informação para ser utilizada em tarefas de PLN, com precisão e abrangência de 44% e 92,89%, respectivamente / Building computational-linguistic base resources, like computational lexical resources (CLR), is one of the goals of Natural Language Processing (NLP). However, most computational lexicons are specific to English. One of the resources already developed for English is the VerbNet, a lexicon with domain-independent semantic and syntactic information of English verbs. It is based on Levin\'s verb classification, with mappings to Princeton\'s WordNet (WordNet). Since only a few computational studies for languages other than English have been made about Levin\'s classification, and given the lack of a Portuguese CLR similar to VerbNet, the goal of this research was to create a CLR for Brazilian Portuguese (called VerbNet.Br). The manual building of these resources is usually unfeasible because it is time consuming and it can include many human-made errors. Therefore, great efforts have been made to build such resources with the aid of computational techniques. One of these techniques is machine learning, a widely known and used method for extracting linguistic information from corpora. Another one is the use of pre-existing resources for other languages, most commonly English, to support the building of new aligned resources, taking advantage of some multilingual/cross-linguistic features (like the ones in Levin\'s verb classification). The method proposed here for the creation of VerbNet.Br is generic, therefore it may be used to build similar resources for languages other than Brazilian Portuguese. Moreover, the proposed method also allows for a future extension of the resource via subclasses of concepts. The VerbNet.Br has a four-step method: three automatic and one manual. However, experiments were also carried out without the manual step, which can be discarded without affecting precision and recall. The evaluation of the resource was intrinsic, both qualitative and quantitative. The qualitative evaluation consisted in: (a) manual analysis of some VerbNet classes, resulting in a Brazilian Portuguese gold standard; (b) comparison of this gold standard with the VerbNet.Br results, presenting promising results (almost 60% of f-measure); and (c), comparison of the VerbNet.Br results to verb clustering results, showing that both methods achieved similar results. The quantitative evaluation considered the acceptance rate of candidate members of VerbNet.Br, showing results around 90% of acceptance. One of the contributions of this research is to present the first version of VerbNet.Br. Although it still requires linguistic validation, it already provides information to be used in NLP tasks, with precision and recall of 44% and 92.89%, respectively

La présente recherche s’interroge sur la présumée dichotomie entre les alternances et les généralisations de surface dans le cadre théorique de la grammaire de constructions. Plus précisément,l’objectif de cette thèse est ternaire. Par l’analyse attentive d’une grande quantité de données, nous faisons une description détaillée de l’alternance causative en anglais (The fabric stretched vs. Joan stretched the fabric), nous proposons une méthode qui permet de mesurer la force d’alternance des verbes ainsi que la quantité de sens partagée entre les deux constructions, et, enfin, nous montrons que si l’on veut rendre compte des contraintes au niveau de la construction, l’on doit alors prendre en compte les généralisations de plus bas niveau, telles que les interactions entre le verbe et ses arguments dans le cadre de chaque construction. Afin d’ajouter au débat entre alternance et généralisations de surface, nous proposons une analyse détaillée des deux constructions qui forment l’alternance causative en anglais : la construction intransitive non-causative d’une part et la construction transitive causative de l’autre.Notre but est de mesurer la quantité de sens partagée par les deux constructions mais aussi démontrer en quoi ces deux constructions diffèrent. Dans cette optique, nous prenons en compte trois éléments: construction, verbe et thème (i.e. l’entité sujette à l’évènement dénoté par le verbe). Nous utilisons la sémantique distributionnelle pour la mesure des similarités sémantiques entre les divers thèmes employés avec chaque verbe dans chaque construction dans notre corpus.Ce groupement sémantique met en lumière les différents sens verbaux employés avec chaque construction et nous permet d’établir des généralisations quant aux contraintes qui s’appliquent au thème dans chaque construction. / The present research takes issue with the supposed dichotomy between alternations on the onehand and surface generalisations on the other, within the framework of construction grammar.More specifically the aim of this thesis is threefold. Through the careful analysis of a largedataset, we aim to provide a thorough description of the causative alternation in English (Thefabric stretched vs. Joan stretched the fabric), suggest a method that allows for a solid measure ofa verb’s alternation strength and of the amount of shared meaning between two constructions,and finally, show that in order to capture constraints at the level of the construction, one mustpay attention to lower level generalisations such as the interaction between verb and argumentswithin the scope of each construction.In an effort to add to the discussion on alternation vs. surface generalisations, we propose adetailed study of the two constructions that make up the causative alternation: the intransitivenon-transitive causative construction and the transitive causative construction. Our goal is tomeasure the amount of meaning shared by the two constructions and also show the differencesbetween the two. In order to do so we take three elements into account: construction, verband theme (i.e. the entity that undergoes the event denoted by the verb). We use distributionalsemantics to measure the semantic similarity of the various themes found with each verb andeach construction in our corpus. This grouping highlights the different verb senses used witheach construction and allows us to draw generalisations as to the constraints on the theme ineach construction.

This thesis deals with direct object nouns case-marked differentially. According to the commonly assumed generalization nouns marked with ACC case are prototypical objects representing high transitivity, whereas nouns marked with non-accusative cases are not. However, such a view ignores the possibility of a much finer distinction and fails to account for empirical data from languages with rich case morphology, such as Ukrainian. Given the complexity of the phenomenon under study the main objective of our investigation is to account exhaustively for all possible instances of non-accusative case marking and case alternations on direct objects in Ukrainian trying to classify and analyze the data by specifying the factors that condition the distinction ‘accusative versus non-accusative case marking’ and by integrating the phenomenon of differential object marking (DOM) into a formal model. We present DOM as a phenomenon that, together with the phenomenon of unaccusativity, can be subsumed under a broader concept of non-accusativity (defined as inability of verbs to assign ACC case). In this context we show that in Ukrainian and French morphosyntactic case realization has semantic underpinnings and that issues related to case valuation emanate from the intersection of different phenomena – DOM and nominal incorporation, DOM and verb typology, DOM and the process of (de)transitivization, and so on. However, the (morphosyntactic) visibility of those points of intersection varies from one language to another. Generativist distinction between syntactic (abstract) and morphological cases as well as the functionalist idea that case markings can be characterized as morphemes having different functional applications constitute the basis of our analysis of data. Using the typological views of these two approaches on the category of case as guidelines in our classification of collected data, we resort to minimalist formalism. Case is treated as an uninterpretable feature and a clear distinction is drawn between two types of case valuation – case checking and case assignment. Structural cases are checked during verb-raising and inherent (lexical) cases (among which we find predicate and default cases) are assigned either by a weak (or defective) v or by (an overt or null) preposition (P) in situ.

This thesis deals with direct object nouns case-marked differentially. According to the commonly assumed generalization nouns marked with ACC case are prototypical objects representing high transitivity, whereas nouns marked with non-accusative cases are not. However, such a view ignores the possibility of a much finer distinction and fails to account for empirical data from languages with rich case morphology, such as Ukrainian. Given the complexity of the phenomenon under study the main objective of our investigation is to account exhaustively for all possible instances of non-accusative case marking and case alternations on direct objects in Ukrainian trying to classify and analyze the data by specifying the factors that condition the distinction ‘accusative versus non-accusative case marking’ and by integrating the phenomenon of differential object marking (DOM) into a formal model. We present DOM as a phenomenon that, together with the phenomenon of unaccusativity, can be subsumed under a broader concept of non-accusativity (defined as inability of verbs to assign ACC case). In this context we show that in Ukrainian and French morphosyntactic case realization has semantic underpinnings and that issues related to case valuation emanate from the intersection of different phenomena – DOM and nominal incorporation, DOM and verb typology, DOM and the process of (de)transitivization, and so on. However, the (morphosyntactic) visibility of those points of intersection varies from one language to another. Generativist distinction between syntactic (abstract) and morphological cases as well as the functionalist idea that case markings can be characterized as morphemes having different functional applications constitute the basis of our analysis of data. Using the typological views of these two approaches on the category of case as guidelines in our classification of collected data, we resort to minimalist formalism. Case is treated as an uninterpretable feature and a clear distinction is drawn between two types of case valuation – case checking and case assignment. Structural cases are checked during verb-raising and inherent (lexical) cases (among which we find predicate and default cases) are assigned either by a weak (or defective) v or by (an overt or null) preposition (P) in situ.