Next Tuesday, May 2, we welcome Dr. Alexandra Anna Spalek at the LEL Research Seminar. Alexandra’s talk will discuss cross-linguistic variation in the use of figurative verbs. The talk takes a logical semantic perspective, and focusses on English and Spanish. Here is a short abstract:
The logical semantic underpinnings of cross-linguistic variation in `figurative’ uses of verbs
Alexandra Anna Spalek
(University of Oslo)
–
SHORT ABSTRACT:
Formally-oriented linguists have paid comparatively little attention to ‘figurative’ uses of verbs
(e.g. (1-b) or (1-c) in contrast to e.g. (1-a)).
(1)
a. […] the knife cut through the meat.
b. His words cut with the sting of an obsidian sliver.
c. a bipartisan plan to cut the deficit
Our ongoing contrastive study of English and Spanish shows that while examples like (1-b) may fall under familiar theories of conceptual metaphor that are independent of grammar (e.g. Lakoff and Johnson 1980), examples like (1-c) vary across languages in ways that reflect fundamental grammatical differences in lexical aspectual systems. In this talk we maintain that examples like (1-c) constitute evidence that should not be ignored in debates about the analysis of verb meaning and the grammar/meaning interface, such as that concerning Manner/Result complementarity (Levin and Rappaport-Hovav 1991).
SHORT ABSTRACT:
Formally-oriented linguists have paid comparatively little attention to ‘figurative’ uses of verbs
(e.g. (1-b) or (1-c) in contrast to e.g. (1-a)).
(1)
a. […] the knife cut through the meat.
b. His words cut with the sting of an obsidian sliver.
c. a bipartisan plan to cut the deficit
Our ongoing contrastive study of English and Spanish shows that while examples like (1-b) may fall under familiar theories of conceptual metaphor that are independent of grammar (e.g. Lakoff and Johnson 1980), examples like (1-c) vary across languages in ways that reflect fundamental grammatical differences in lexical aspectual systems. In this talk we maintain that examples like (1-c) constitute evidence that should not be ignored in debates about the analysis of verb meaning and the grammar/meaning interface, such as that concerning Manner/Result complementarity (Levin and Rappaport-Hovav 1991).
Please join us for the talk! As usual, everyone is invited to stick around afterwards to talk to our speaker over some wine and crisps.
Event details:
Location: Sam Alex_A112
Date and time: Tuesday, April 25, 4.15pm-5.30pm
Posted in: Uncategorized
Manchet 
Posted on April 28, 2017 by manling