Complement Polyvalence and Permutation in English

作者：Gillon Brendan S^*

来源：Journal of Logic, Language and Information, 2014, 23(3): 275-285.

DOI：10.1007/s10849-014-9191-2

• Argument
• Complement
• Complement polyadicity
• Complement position polyvalence
• Dative shift
• Double object construction

In this paper, I address the problem wherein the same English word permits one of its complement positions to be satisfied by phrases of different categories. A well-known example of such an English word is the copula to be, whose complements include adjective phrases, noun phrases, prepositional phrases and adverbial phrases. I provide a way to treat such words, in particular verbs, as single lexical items through a conservative extension of the usual treatment of word classification as a pair comprising a part of speech category and a complement list. I then show how a further conservative extension of complement lists permits a satisfactory formalization of doubly complemented English verbs which are synonymous under a permutation of their complements. These verbs include, but are not limited to, so-called double object constructions.

• 出版日期2014-9
• 单位McGill