Rice Department of Linguistics Colloquium

A Corpus-Based Study
of
Regular Polysemy and Underspecification:
The Case of Portuguese Psych-Verbs

Amalia Mendes
Rice University/University of Lisbon
amendes@rice.edu

Thursday March 15, 2001

4:00 p.m.

Humanities Bldg. 118


Abstract

Psych-verbs have been mostly studied in the field of generative syntax for their specific syntactic properties and have subsequently been assumed to have a non-prototypical transitive structure, which implies a homonymic treatment of their plurality of meanings. Following the comments of Ruwet (1972) on the existence of a relationship between the meanings of this class of verbs, I used a Portuguese corpus of 11 M written words to extract concordances and collocations of intrinsic psych-verbs, i.e. those whose meaning is inherently psychological, like preocupar 'to worry', and of non-intrinsic psych-verbs, which are not primarily psychological and have other senses, like for example minar 'to mine' and electrizar 'to electrify'. The transitive construction of preocupar is exemplified in (1a) and the anticausative construction in (1b), while (2) and (3) are examples of the psych and non-psych meanings of the verbs minar and electrizar:

    1. A agitagco social em peréodo pré-eleitoral preocupa a Igreja (.). (R2195)
      'The social agitation during the pre-election period worries the Church.'
    2. Comegava a preocupar-se com aquela demora (.). (L0234)
      '[She/He] was starting to worry about that delay.'
    1. O encarregado deu ordem aos operários para comecarem a minar.
      'The chief gave orders to the workers to start mining.'
    2. A ausência de notícias minava-nos aos poucos.
      'The absence of news was sapping us (lit. 'mining us') slowly.'
    1. "A água que cai na vertical aproxima-se da régua electrizada devido a forga de atracgco desta última." (L0356)
      'The water falling vertically approaches the electrified ruler due to the attraction force of the latter.'
    2. (.) reaparece Elvira para a grande cena da sua demência (...), electrizando com a sua espantosa técnica vocal (.).(J17341)
      'Elvira returns for the grand scene of her dementia, electrifying with her astonishing vocal techique.'
The corpus study of the intrinsic psych-verbs provides us with a control group and allows us to identify the prototypical properties of psych-verbs at syntactic, semantic and aspectual levels. The syntactic corpus-based study of psych-verbs like minar and electrizar shows that the properties of the primary meaning do influence the syntactic properties of the psych meaning:

(a) when the primary meaning occurs in an intransitive anticausative construction, the psych-meaning also shares this construction instead of the prototypical pronominal anticausative one, as in the examples with aquecer 'to heat':

    1. A sopa aqueceu. / * A sopa aqueceu-se.
      'The soup got hot.'
    2. Os ânimos aqueceram. / * Os ânimos aqueceram-se.
      'Feelings / souls got hot.'

(b) if the non-psych meaning doesn't allow for any causative (intransitive or pronominal) construction (usually related to a preferential agentive interpretation of the subject), neither does the psych-meaning, as with the verb demolir 'to demolish':

    1. * O prédio demoliu-se.
      'The building demolished.'
    2. * Ao ouvirem a notícia, os colegas demoliram-se.
      'When they heard the news, the colleagues demolished.'

c) however, verbs with a high frequency of the psych-meaning in the corpus do not follow the patterns in (a) and (b) and the psych-meaning maintains the prototypical anticausative alternation (as well as adjectival passive and some other alternations), as with the verb ralar 'to grate / to worry':

    1. * O queijo ralava-se.
      'The cheese grated.'
    2. O Joao ralava-se muito com a saúde dos filhos.
      'Joao worried about his children's health.'

A study of polysemy furthermore identifies analogical and conceptual processes, which confirm the existence of regularities in the psych-extension of meaning. These regularities are expressed in terms of lexical rules, which specify the units of meaning which allow for the semantic extension, to what semantic outputs they are related, as well as the syntactic limitations imposed by the core meaning.

The corpus data further show other types of plurality of meaning in verbs with psych-meaning, exemplified by afoguear 'to make blush' and acalmar 'to calm' in (7) and (8):

  1. Este piedoso alvorogo afogueou-lhe as faces pílidas (.). (L0245)
    'This emotion of piety made her white face blush.'
    1. acalmar uma pessoa 'to calm someone'
    2. acalmar o trbnsito 'to calm the traffic'
    3. acalmar a Bolsa 'to calm the Stock Exchange'
    4. acalmar as ondas 'to calm the waves'
Verbs like afoguear and irritar refer to a physical and/or psychological change of state, while acalmar refers to the graduation of a state, the nature of which depends on the type of entity of the direct object. Verbs with psych-meaning are thus structured mainly in terms of regular polysemy, allosemy and underspecification. The corpus data also gives an interesting linguistic insight into the connection between emotive, cognitive and sensorial experiences.

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