How Complex Verbs Acquire Their Idiosyncratic Meanings

Abstract

Complex verbs with the same preverb/prefix/particle that is both linguistically productive and analyzable can be compositional as well as non-compositional in meaning. For example, the English on has compositional spatial uses (put a hat on) but also a non-spatial “continuative” use, where its semantic contribution is consistent with multiple verbs (we played / worked / talked on despite the interruption). Comparable examples can be given with German preverbs or Russian prefixes, which are the main data analyzed in the present paper. The preverbs/prefixes/particles that encode non-compositional, construction-specific senses have been extensively studied; however, it is still far from clear how their semantic idiosyncrasies arise. Even when one can identify the contribution of the base, it is counterintuitive to assign the remaining sememes to the preverb/prefix/particle part. Therefore, on one hand, there seems to be an element without meaning, and on the other, there is a word sense that apparently comes from nowhere. In this article, I suggest analyzing compositional and non-compositional complex verbs as instantiations of two different types of constructions: one with an open slot for the preverb/prefix/particle and a fixed base verb and another with a fixed preverb/prefix/particle and an open slot for the base verb. Both experimental and corpus evidence supporting this decision is provided for Russian data. I argue that each construction implies its own meaning-processing model and that the actual choice between the two can be predicted by taking into account the discrepancy in probabilities of transition from preverb/prefix/particle to base and from base to preverb/prefix/particle.