Are Dutch posture verbs lexical or functional elements?

In Dutch, posture verbs like liggen ‘lie’ and staan ‘stand’ are obligatorily used in locative constructions with inanimate subjects, classifying the spatial Figure-Ground relation. Prima facie, in this use, posture verbs seem more like functional elements than like lexical verbs. This paper investigates processing of Dutch posture verbs in a reference resolution task in the visual world paradigm, to get more clarity on the nature of these verbs. We know that lexical verbs like rinkelen ‘ring’ cause anticipatory looks towards a matching target referent like telefoon ‘telephone’; and that they s... Mehr ...

Verfasser: Mulders, Iris
Dokumenttyp: Artikel
Erscheinungsdatum: 2021
Schlagwörter: Eye-tracking / Grammatical gender / Lexicality / Posture verbs / Visual world paradigm / Language and Linguistics / Linguistics and Language
Sprache: Englisch
Permalink: https://search.fid-benelux.de/Record/base-29039672
Datenquelle: BASE; Originalkatalog
Powered By: BASE
Link(s) : https://dspace.library.uu.nl/handle/1874/415832

In Dutch, posture verbs like liggen ‘lie’ and staan ‘stand’ are obligatorily used in locative constructions with inanimate subjects, classifying the spatial Figure-Ground relation. Prima facie, in this use, posture verbs seem more like functional elements than like lexical verbs. This paper investigates processing of Dutch posture verbs in a reference resolution task in the visual world paradigm, to get more clarity on the nature of these verbs. We know that lexical verbs like rinkelen ‘ring’ cause anticipatory looks towards a matching target referent like telefoon ‘telephone’; and that they suppress looks to a phonological competitor like telescoop ‘telescope’. The functional property of grammatical gender on determiners (de vs. het) is less robust in directing looks. When it comes to anticipating the target referent, and suppressing looks to a phonological competitor, do posture verbs pattern with lexical verbs, or with functional elements like grammatical gender?