Grammaticalization of the verb (Greek text) 'scatter' in Poshkart Chuvash: semantics and selectional restrictions

Abstract

The paper is dedicated to the semantics and the distribution of the light verb (Greek text) in Poshkart Chuvash. In its lexical usage, the verb (Greek text) means 'scatter', i. e., denotes a series of throwing events distributed over time. This verb is grammaticalized into an aspectual modifier (light verb) that forms telic pluractional complex predicates in combination with lexical verbs with an external argument. Any event denoted by a complex predicate with (Greek text) should consist of a number of subevents that is larger than the contextually relevant standard. Besides that, the light verb (Greek text) shows controversial behavior with respect to the well-known opposition between event-internal and event-external pluractionals. According to the tests provided in [Henderson 2012], the light verb (Greek text) shows split behavior and cannot be assigned to one of the classes. Namely, complex predicates with (Greek text) pattern with event-external pluractional predicates in that they can be formed from lexical verbs of various actional classes, can denote events with large breaks between their subevents and have the extension which is a subset of the extension of their base predicate. On the other hand, complex predicates with (Greek text) pattern with event-internal pluractionals in that they do not denote habitual events and require the denoted subevents to be of a large number and have a shared endpoint. It will be shown, however, that despite the similarity observed with the event-internal pluractionals, the light verb (Greek text) can still be analyzed as an event-external pluractional - and such an analysis is presented in the paper.