The Interrelation of Semantic Structure and Syntactic Variation in Oíd English Verb Classes : Catalogue of Syntactico-Semantic Constructions

The aim of this paper is to motívate the syntactic and morphological behaviour of the Oíd English verbs which share fhe core meaning of 'to remember', 'to emit a smell', 'to produce a sound' and 'to speak' from their semantic structure. Firstly, as a result of the analysis of these verb subclasses, I will propose a subclass-based lexical témplate for each lexical subclass. Within the Lexical Grammar Model, lexical templates are conceived as lexical representations where meaning description is encapsulated and interacts with the syntactic behaviour of lexical units. In order to construct a lexical témplate, Role and Reference Grammar logical structures will be complemented by a semantic decomposition which will define different lexical (sub-)classes. Secondly, the Lexical Témplate Modelling Process will stipulate the linking between the syntactic and semantic representation of these verbs. This process will establish the lexical rules that account for the mapping between the different semantic constructions and the syntactic structures and alternations in which these verbs particípate and the lexical templates codified by these verb subclasses. As a result, a catalogue of the syntactico-semantic constructions exhíbited by these Oíd English verbal predicates will be provided.


Introduction
The aim of this paper is to describe the interaction of meaning and syntax in the Oíd English set of remember, smell emission, sound emission and speak verbs.As Mairal and Cortés (forthcoming) state, "one of the most interesting challenges for linguistic models in the last years is the design of a syntax-semantics interface whose central task should be to link lexical representations with morphological and syntactic structures, ideally in a bidirectional fashion".This, in fact, is the major concern of the Lexical Grammar Model (henceforth LGM).This theoretical frameworkputs forward a procedure of lexical representationby means of an inventory of lexical témplales which encode the semantic description of a lexical (sub-)class in a formal system of representation, together with a set of lexical mapping rules which will enabíe us to account for the syntactic and morphological configuration of a given predicate.
This proposal is based on the following basic claims about lexical organization (Mairal and Cortés, forthcoming): (a) the lexicón should be organized into coherent semantic (sub-)classes; (b)lexical (sub-)classes are receptacles of a rich set of linguistic regularities, as the predicates of a lexical (sub-)class share both a semantic and a syntactic territory; (c) from (b) follows that the lexicón is a source of syntactic predictability.
Therefore, the lexicón in the LGM not only codifíes how lexemes are arranged in a hierarchy of lexical (sub-)classes, but is also a determining factor in their syntactic behaviour.As Faber and Mairal (1999: 143) state: In the (...) lexicón, paradigmatic and syntagmatic information are closely interrelated to the extent that a verb's syntax depends on its location on the semantic space.In other words, a verb's combinatorial possibilities and syntactic potential are semantically motivated.
The structure of this paper will be as follows: firstly, we will explain the procedure for selecting the corpus of Oíd English predicates that belong to the lexical subclasses of remember, smell emission, sound emission and speak verbs; secondly, we will concéntrate on the concept of lexical témplate, together with the linking algorithm which will model the lexical témplate corresponding to a given subclass in order to account for the morphosyntactic structures shown by the predicates which conform it; thirdly, we will construct the lexical templates that constitute the semantic representation of the verbal predicates mentioned above, as the input for providing the catalogue of syntactico-semantic constructions exhibited by the members of these four verb subclasses.

Corpus selection
Following the assumption that lexical (sub-)classes remain diachronically constant for the most part (Cortés and Torres, 2003), the Oíd English subclasses under study will be constructed turning the information from the Thesaurus of Oíd English (TOE) into the structure of these subclasses in Present-day English (Faber and Mairal, 1999: 286-288, 290).Then, the information extracted from the TOE will be checked against the definitions contained in the Oíd English lexicographical sources by Bosworth & Toller (B&T), Toller & Campbell (T&C) and Hall.
In this regard, we have primarily selected four verb classes from the Oíd English lexicón, that is, cognition, perception, sound and speech, and within them the lexical subclasses corresponding to remember, smell emission, sound emission and speak verbs, respectively.We postúlate that the syntactico-semantic constructions codified by these subclasses can be highly representative of the constructions exhibited by the verbal predicates in the first phase of the English language.
Taking into account their core meaning, we will be able to group the verbal predicates provided by the TOE as follows: (a) As stated above, the lexemes belonging to a given verb subclass will show basically the same morphological and syntactic behaviour, except for certain particularities which may arise in a detailed description of these lexical units.As Cortés and Mairal (2002: 15-16) state, "by combining the information from different lexicographical sources [..] the level of differentiae specificae [...] seems impossible to determine: a definitive ascertainment of sense-relations among lexemes is implausible unless further sources of information are used".Therefore, the next step will be to obtain and analyse the contexts in which these lexemes appear by locating the lexemes that intégrate these four subclasses in B&T, T&C, The Helsinki Corpus of English Texts (HSK) and The Dictionary of Oíd English Corpus (DOEQ.

The concept of lexical témplate: Semantic decompositions enrich Role and Reference Grammar logical structures
In this section, we will provide a brief account of the notion of lexical témplate.Within the LGM, lexical templates are conceived as lexical representations which include syntactic and semantic information within the same format, supplying Role and Reference Grammar logical structures (RRG's LSs) with a semantic decomposition which will define different lexical classes.This has beenpointed out by several authors (Cortés and Torres, 2003;Mairal and Cortés, forthcoming;Mairal and Faber, 2002;Van Valin, 2004).Van Valin and LaPolla (1997) propose a system of lexical representation, by means of LSs which describe verbal predicates interms of úieir Aktionsart or internal temporal properties.This classification implies a way to capture syntactic and morphological phenomena, such as the combinatory possibilities of predicates and case assignment, characteristic of the different verb classes.Thus, within RRG six verb classes are distinguished, that is, states [ +static, -telic, -punctual], activities [ -static, -telic,punctual], achievements [ -static, +telic, +punctual], semelfactives [ ±static], [-telic ], [+punctual ], accomplishments and active accomplishments [ -static, + telic,punctual], together with their causative counterparts ( Van Valin, 2004) As table 1 shows, LSs follow the conventions of formal semantics.Constante, inboldface followed by a prime, are part of the semantic metalanguage and will be applied to any language.However, variables in normal typeface are filled by lexical items from the language under study.Finally, the elements in capitals, such as INGR, SEML, BECOME, or CAUSE, will modify the predicate ( Van Valin and LaPolla, 1997: 102).
In order to attain the argument structure of a verb, Van Valin and LaPolla (1997:139) propose two general semantic relations, the/lctarand Undergoer macroroles, whichare "generalizations across the argument-types found with particular verbs which have significant grammatical consequences."As úieActor-UndergoerHierarchy below shows (Valin and LaPolla, 1997: 146) Kailuweit (2004) points out the fact that macroroles are categories mediating between semantics and syntax.Consequently, they also have morphosyntactic characteristics: in Oíd English macroroles are assigned to core arguments, that is, arguments marked by a grammatical case (Alien, 1995;Denison, 1993;Fischer etal., 2000;McLaughlin, 1983;Mitchell, 1985), in opposition to oblique arguments, which are introduced by prepositions.
The interaction between arguments and macroroles is established in the macrorole assignmentprincipies (Van Valin and LaPolla, 1997: 152-53): Number: the number of macroroles a verb takes is less than or equal to the number of arguments initsLS, If a verb has two or more arguments in its LS, it will take two macroroles.
If a verb has one argument in its LS, ít will take one macrorole.Nature: for verbs which take one macrorole, If the verb has an activity predícate in its LS, the macrorole is actor.
If the verb has no activity predicate in its LS, the macrorole is undergoer.
Moreover, case assignment rules are also related to the assignment of macroroles.Based on Van Valin and LaPolla (1997: 359), we propose the following case assignment rules for Oíd English verbs: Assign nominative case to the highest-ranking macrorole argument, that is, the Actor.Assign accusative case to the other macrorole argument, that is, the Undergoer.Assign dative or genitive to non-macrorole arguments. 2  One important feature of the LGM is the assumption that taking into account the interaction existing between macroroles and grammatical relations, the information to be included in the lexical representations will be greatly reduced.However, a detailed description of lexical units is necessary, since LSs lack the semantic information characteristic of lexical classes.This is achieved by incorporating the semantic features (semantic primitives and internal variables) and the syntactic features (external variables) common to the set of verbs which belong to the same lexical class into a unified representation.Accordingly, Mairal and Faber (2002: 54) describe lexical templates in the following terms: Lexical templates confíate both syntactic information (those aspects of the meaning of a word which are grammatically relevant) and semantic information (those aspects which act as distinctive parameters within a whole lexical class) into one unified representation.

The linking algorithm within the LGM
Lexical templates not only will include the semantic information corresponding to the set of verbs which belong to the same verb (sub-)class, but will also allow us to explain the morpho-syntactic structures and alternations shown by fhese verbal predicates.Therefore, the linking system entails two phases: the first phase of linking will depart f rom the lexical témplate in order to provide an adequate description of the semantics of the constructions in which the different sets of verbs particípate; on the other hand, the second phase of linking will make use of a set of morpho-syntactic rules in order to describe the morphological and syntactic structure of the constituents in the different constructions.
The first phase of the linking algorithm attempts to apply the Lexical Témplate Modelling Process which, by means of an inventory of lexical mapping rules proposed by Mairal and Cortés (forthcoming), will enable us to account for the mapping between the lexical templates and the semantic constructions with their corresponding constructionbased templates shown by the members of lexical (sub-)classes.The Lexical Témplate Modelling Process has been summarised by Mairal and Faber (2002: 87) as follows: Lexical templates can be modeled by suppressing external variables, instantiating internal variables, eliminating operators (e.g.CAUSE), or else, by introducing elements resulting from the fusión with other templates iff there is a compatibility between the features in the lexical témplate and the syntactic construction under scrutiny.
Taking into account the previous discussion, the constructions to be presented below will support the view within the LGM "when it is postulated that, prior to the assignment of morpho-syntactic rules, there is a linking phase between the lexical templates of a class and the constructions where the predicates of such a class particípate.(...).Constructional templates are (...) considered independent entities in the model with a capacity to contribute to the final semantic configuration of sentences" (Cortés and González, 2004).With regard to the second phase of linking, the macrorole assignment principies and case assignment rules will predict the syntactic and morphological behaviour of Oíd English verbal predicates from their semantic structure.

In search of subclass-based lexical templates
Let us introduce the lexical templates that constitute the syntactico-semantic representation of the verb subclasses under study:

Remember verbs
According to Van Valin and Wilkins (1993: 509), in remembering "a person starts to actively think about something, and for the duration of this activity there is an entailment that the person has this something in mind".In this regard, we will propose the following lexical témplate for the subclass of remember verbs in Oíd English: [BECOME think.again.about.something.(á).be.in.mind.from.before'(x, z)], where z = á As expressed by the operator BECOME, this lexical representation contains the LS of an accomplishment codifying a change which requires duration.It shows two external variables (x) and (z), or external argumentpositions, marked in Román letters, which will have a syntactic representation.In addition, the internal variable (á), marked in Greek and considered an ontological constant that does not necessarily receive linguistic expression, encodes the contení of the predicate think' and will be linked to (z): (1) le (x) God (z) gemyndgade (B&T) I-God-remembered.

Smell emission verbs
The corresponding lexical representation codifies mainly the emission of a smell (pleasant or unpleasant), by means of a physical or chemical process, with no specification of the source of such smell or of any causing entity or activity.Accordingly, fhis témplate denotes a stative LS headed by the predicate have' and showing an external variable (z), which corresponds to the emitter of the (un)pleasant smell (González, fortheoming): [have.smeír, [be (smell, |"(un)pleasant'l)1 (z)1 (2) nu he (z) stingd (HSK: Cowsgosp < R 11.39 >) Now-he-smells unpleasantly.

Sound emission verbs
Unlike the two previous subclass-based lexical templates, it is interesting to observe that the lexical representation corresponding to sound emission verbs involves two subevents where an effector (w) uses an instrument, codified in terms of the use' predicate and the external variable (v/voice), which in turns causes the production of a sound: This témplate, thus, contains a causative activity showing three external argument positions (w), (v/voice) and (sound) which will have a syntactic representation.Besides, the internal variable (6), which encodes the manner in which the sound is produced, has been incorporated in this lexical representation as a semantic component denoting a loud sound (Cortés and González, 2004): (3) Herewopa (sound) mcestade cyrmdon (w: elliptical) (B&T) Cries of an army-most-hateful-cried out (they).

Catalogue of syntactico-semantic verbal constructions
Once we have described the subclass-based lexical templates codified by the Oíd English verbs under study, we will proceed to construct the catalogue of syntactico-semantic constructions shown by these predicates by means of construction-based templates.
As Van Valin and Wilkins (1993:499) state, "the types and form of the complements that a predícate takes can be deduced directly from the semantic representation in its lexical entry.(...) the syntactic properties of its complements will be derived from that representation together with a set of independently-motivated, language-specific and universal semantic, lexical and morphosyntactic principies".Therefore, applying the Lexical Témplate Modelling Process to the lexical templates presented above, we will obtain the MI range of construction-based templates corresponding to the semantic constructions in which these verbal predicates particípate.

Transitive construction
The first construction under analysis is the transitive construction.In RRG, transitivity becomes a semantic notion since the number of semantic macroroles a predícate takes determines it: those verbs that take two macroroles are transitive verbs, whereas those with one macrorole are intransitive; verbs which do not take any macrorole are considered atransitive.
As the Lexical Témplate Modelling Process stipulates, the corresponding constructionbased témplate below which provides a semantic representation of this construction and the lexical témplate codified by this subclass meet the lexical mapping rule "full matching", according to which there exists an identification of variables, subevents and operators between both the subclass-based témplate and this constructional témplate: [BECOME think.again.about.something.(o)).be.in.mind.from.before'(x, z)], where oo = z As stated above, this lexical representation contains the LS of an accomplishment showing two external argument positíons (x) and (z), and an intemal variable (oo), encoding the content of the predicate think', which will be linked to (z).The linking between internal and external variables will determine the syntactic behaviour of verbal lexemes.Therefore, applying RRG's macrorole and case assignment principies, the variable (x) takes macrorole actor and nominative case, whereas the external variable (z) in accusative will take macrorole undergoer: (5) le (x: nominative -actor) God (z: accusative -undergoer) gemyndgade (B&T) I-God-remembered.

Resultative construction
As its ñame suggests, this construction describes the state achieved as a result of an action: (6) Jasmine pushed the door open.(Levin, 1993: 100) The lexical mapping rule "predicate integration condition" will account for the mechanism involved in the integration of a new subevent in the constructional templates below propitiating this result: The constructional témplate may introduce a new predicate into the canonical lexical témplate iff the semantics of the added predicate is compatible with the semantic content of the lexical témplate.A case in point is the middle, the caused motion and the resultative construction.In the first subevents of the constructional templates above the external variable (w) acts as effector initiating an action (do') by using (use') an instrument, such that this effector causes (CAUSE) the act of remembering, the emission of a pleasant smell or the knowledge of a content, respectively, as encoded in the terminal subevents.The constructional templates concerning remember and speak verbs contain the LS of a causative accomplishment.Regarding macrorole and case assignment, (w) functions as actor and takes nominative case, the variable (z) takes macrorole undergoer and accusative case, and finally (y), as anon-macrorole argument referring to the addressee, takes dative case.On the other hand, the constructional témplate corresponding to smell emission verbs involves a causative state wifh the variable (w) as actor in nominative, (z) as undergoer in accusative and (v) will be introduced by the preposition mid.
There is one issue that still needs commenting.The resultative construction involves the link between different lexical classes: the verb classes of speech and cognition in remember and speak verbs, and action and perception in the case of smell emission verbs.As Faber and Mairal (1999:254) state, transition zones are lexical subclasses "which are on the boundary between two áreas of conceptual meaning.Lexical units within these zones can be said to belong to two domains ".An example of this overlap can be also seen in the lexical classes of sound and speech, depending on whether the sound emitted is articulated or not: (10) a She screamed/yelled/screeched/shrieked when she saw the cockroaches in the refrigerator.
[SOUND] b.She screamed/yelled/screeched/shrieked, "Look at the cockroaches in the refrigerator!"[SPEECH] (Faber and Mairal, 1999:254) As becomes clear from the preceding passage, the representation of the meaning of a given predícate must include not only its internal but also its external structure.The infernal structure comes from the syntactic and semantic parameters recurring within the subclass to which a predícate belongs.Moreover, the external structure takes into account the connections existing between this predícate and others of the lexicón, resulting in a semantic network of lexical classes.

Reaction object construction
In order to account for the reaction object construction, Levin (1993: 98) points out the fact that "certain intransitive verbs -particularly verbs of manner of speaking and verbs of gestures and signs-take non-subcategorized objects that express a reaction (an emotion or disposition) (...).When these verbs take such objects they take on an extended sense which might be paraphrased "express (a reaction) by V-ing," where "V" is the basic sense of theverb": (11) Paula smiled her thanks.(Levin, 1993: 98) This construction is found with Oíd English sound emission verbs: Then-criedout-she-to-her-appearance-when-he-heard-that-I-criedout.
This reaction object construction allows sound verbs to be linked semantically to the lexical class of feeling, and requires to encode a subevent [feel.about.(3)'(w, u)] as a causing state of affairs in the emission of a sound.Given the nature of this object, which modulates the general meaning of these verbs and contributes to their semantics by having to add a specific subevent to the témplate (cf."predícate integration condition"), it will be considered in RRG terms an argument-adjunct.In this case it is expressed by a 'to+ dative' phrase (Cortés and González, 2004).

Instrument subject construction
In relation to the instrument subject construction, Oíd English sound emission and speak verbs allow the following alternation, as shown by the constructional templates below: (13) a.David broke the window with a hammer.b.The hammer broke the window.(Levin, 1993:  This construction tackles with the issue of an instrument argument (cf.13a, 14a and 15a), which turns up as subject in (13b), (14b) and (15b).Taking into account the first subevent in the templates codified by sound and speak verbs, if (w) is chosen as Actor (the unexceptional situation if (w) is lexically saturated), then (voice) and (words), respectively, as non-macrorole arguments will take dative or genitive case.
On the other hand, when (w) is not syntactically realised (cf. the alternations in b.), the following candidates to function as actor will be (v) and (words), respectively.The constructional templates in (b.) will be modulated by the lexical mapping rule "suppression of variables", which regulates the procedure for the suppression of the variables contained in the corresponding lexical representations.

Cognate object construction
In RRG, activity verbs are considered intransitive, since their second argument cannot be assigned the macrorole undergoer due to its non-referential inherent nature ( Van Valin andLaPolla, 1997:122-125;147-154).Accordingly, a cognate object is considered non-referential, since it "expresses an intrinsic facet of the meaning of the verb and does not refer specifically to any participants in an event denoted by the verb" (1997: 123): (16) a. Sarah sang.
b. Sarah sang a song.(Levin, 1993: 95) In the cognate object construction codified by sound emission verbs in Oíd English, the variable (w) takes macrorole actor and nominative case and the second argument (sound) in genitive will be treated as a non-macrorole core argument.Cries of an army-most-hateful-cried out (they).

Unspecified object construction
With regard to the unspecified object altemation, Levin (1993:33) posits that "despite the lack of overt direct object in the intransitive variant, the verb in mis variant is understood to nave as object something that qualifies as a typical object of the verb": (18) a. Mike ate the cake.b.Mike ate.(? Mike ate a meal or something one typically eats.) Therefore, the constructional témplate below corresponding to speak verbs and containing a causative activity will be motivated by the lexical mapping rule "suppression of variables", which regulates the procedure for the suppression of the variable (y) contained in the subclass-based lexical representation abo ve:  He-before-talked.

Stative construction
The last relevant construction shown by smell emission verbs is the stative construction.As can be observed, the constructional témplate below and the subclass-based lexical témplate codified by smell emission predicates meet the lexical mapping rule "full matching": [have.smeír, [be r (smell, [(un)pIeasant'Dl (z)1 Regarding the so-called stimulus subject perception verbs in Present-day English, Levin (1993: 188) points out the fact that these predicates "do not take the perceiver as their subject.Rather, these verbs take the stimulus as their subject and express the perceiver in a to prepositional phrase.In addition, these verbs take an adjective phrase complement predicated of the stimulus": (20) That pea soup tasted delicious to me.However, in opposition to Present-day English, Oíd English smell emission verbs participating in the stative construction do not express lexically the perceiver.In this constructional témplate there will be only a macrorole undergoer corresponding to the emitter of a pleasant (21a) or unpleasant (21b) smell, that is, (z).This variable will take macrorole undergoer and nominative case since the state of affairs in this constructional témplate denotes a stative LS (González, forthcoming): (21) a. se lichoma (z: nominative-undergoer) stanc ondpat heafod (z: nominativeundergoer) swa swote swa rosan blostma ond lilian (HSK: Comartyr < R 2373 >) The-body-smelt-and-the-head-as-sweaty as-roses-and-lilies.
[have.smeír, [be' (smell, [unpleasantH)1 (z)1 As a concluding remark, the verb subclasses described above have allowed us to exemplify seven semantic constructions with their corresponding morpho-syntactic configuration: transitive, resultative, reactionobject, instrument subject, cognate object, unspecifiedobject, and finally the stative construction.Taking into account the semantic nature of the verbal predicates under study, they will particípate in the following constructions: a) remember verbs: These cognitive predicates ¡Ilústrate macrorole-transitive verbs taking both actor and undergoer macroroles and designating an accomplishment.Therefore, they can be found in the transitive and the resultative constructions.

b) sound emission verbs:
As activity predicates they are considered macrorole-intransitive verbs with a single actor macrorole as in the reaction object, the instrument subject and the cognate object constructions.
c) speakverbs: They are primarily considered macrorole-intransitive activity verbs taking only an actor macrorole as both the instrument subject and the unspecified object constructions show.However, when involved in the resultative construction, speak verbs will desígnate a causative accomplishment.The semantic feature differentiating their Aktionsart is the telicity of the latter, which will actívate a causative transitive structure, in opposition to the intransitive use of activity verbs.

d) smell emission verbs:
They exemplify perception verbs denoting a state.In doing so, they are regarded as macrorole-intransitive verbs taking, therefore, as their only macrorole an undergoer (cf. the stative construction).However, when these verbs take part in the resultative construction, they behave as macrorole-transitive causative states showing the actor and undergoer macroroles.

Conclusions
This paper has described the interaction between the semantic structure of the set of remember, smell emission, sound emission and speak verbs in Oíd English and their syntactic behaviour, together with the morphological marking of the constituents in the sentences where they appear.Our proposal of a subclass-based lexical témplate for each verb subclass, together with a set of linking mechanisms between these templates and the constructional templates and morpho-syntactic patterning exhibited by its members, offers a way to capture the interrelation of the semantic and syntactic structure of these verbal predicates.
As a result, this paper has provided a catalogue of the syntactico-semantic constructions exhibited by the verb classes under study, to our understanding highly representative of the constructions codified by the Oíd English verbal lexicón.
Nevertheless, the analysis of specific subclass-based constructions will need further investigation.