Accounting for the Semantics of the NP V NP Construction in English

Abstract

In English the NP1 V NP2 construction typically involves arguments that are construed as Agent and Patient, or Subject and Object. It is associated with the notion of transitivity and analyzed accordingly, even when it exhibits only the syntactic properties of transitivity but not its semantic characteristics. This phenomenon is well-known and has been accounted for by linguists (Lakoff 1977; Hopper and Thompson 1980, among others) as a result of the absence of some prototypical transitive features in the utterance. This paper aims at demonstrating that the NP1 V NP2 structure has a semantic value and conveys a general abstract sense, of which prototypical transitivity represents only one particular realization whose occurrence is determined by the semantic and aspectual properties of the context. It will be argued that the sense of this construction can be explained through concepts that are not usually used in the description of transitive utterances, namely conjunction and disjunction. In some examples, the subject enters a relation of conjunction or disjunction with the object. In others, it is the other way round.