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Frame Semantics for Verbs

Subject Area General and Comparative Linguistics, Experimental Linguistics, Typology, Non-European Languages
Term from 2008 to 2014
Project identifier Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 13165901
 
Final Report Year 2013

Final Report Abstract

A first result of the project is that the FrameNet approach is faced with serious problems in coming up with a consistent and systematic relational system of frames of different degrees of abstraction. As a practical problem, the present set-up of FrameNet with its lexeme-oriented and example-driven definitions of narrow-domain frames is prone to inconsistencies that could hinder the systematic addition of more abstract frames. It is difficult to build a system of abstract frames on purely empirical grounds. The task of building a general account of semantic frames requires a theoretically motivated theory of frame structure in addition to the empirical data. In Osswald & Van Valin (2014), we sketch such a system of decompositional frames, which allows the transparent representation of subcomponents of events and of attributes of participants. Moreover, we show how decompositional event frames can overcome the limitations of traditional event structure templates concerning the representation of implicit results and of gradual changes along a scale. Finally, our critical analysis of Goldberg's Construction Grammar approach to argument linking based on frame semantics has shown that projectionist accounts combined with decompositional frame-semantics can provide a deeper and typologically more satisfactory explanation of linking phenomena.

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