From distributions to roots - Towards a linguistically grounded theory of the conceptual underpinnings of verb meaning

• Applicant: Dr. Tillmann Pross
• Subject Area: General and Comparative Linguistics, Experimental Linguistics, Typology, Non-European Languages
• Term: from 2018 to 2021
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 406004556

A standard method in lexical semantics is to distinguish verb classes conceptually, e.g. by distinguishing verbs that describe a directed motion from verbs that describe a change of state. But the type, number and determination of the conceptual features relevant to verb meaning is an open research question in both theoretical and computational approaches to verb meaning. The project investigates, for the case of intransitive verbs, whether and how conceptual structures derived from distributional semantic representations of verbs provide a novel perspective on those conceptual structures that are standardly invoked in lexical semantics. The goal of the project is come up with a proto-theory of the conceptual interpretation of distributional semantic representations that can be input to theoretically inspired analyses of verb meaning. Figuratively speaking, the project investigates whether there is a systematic, theoretically informed and computationally supported way to perform the drastic dimension reduction that is required to convert a high-dimensional distributional semantic representation of a verb into a low-dimensional conceptual structure that can be understood as a theoretically reasonable and sensible representation of the conceptual meaning of that verb. On an overarching level, the project aims at showing that a combination of theoretical, lexical-conceptual and computational, usage-based approaches to verb meaning may pave the way towards an empirically grounded and theoretically sound theory of verb meaning in its entirety.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants