earticle

영어

Several constraints have been discussed on English resultatives: The Direct Object Constraint, The Single Delimiting Constraint, The Further Specification Constraint and A Semantic/Functional Constraint. This paper reviews these constraints and shows that a semantic constraint is required in order to explain the compatibility between the action denoted by verbs and resultative predicates. The main argument of this paper is based on the analysis of Goldberg’s constructional grammar. According to Goldberg, resultatives are supposed to be consisted of constructional subevents and verbal subevents. Goldberg(1997) proposes the Causal Relation Hypothesis which describes the relation between the meaning designated by the verb and the meaning designated by the construction. This hypothesis, however, cannot explain the semantic difference between The vase broke into pieces and The vase broke worthless. Takami(1998) divides resultatives into lexical resultatives and pragmatic resultatives and suggests an elaborate semantic constraint. According to Takami(1998), the verb hammer contains the meaning of resultative flat. The following sentence, however, shows the contradiction that the contained meaning is negated: John hammered the metal, but it didn’t become flat. To explain these problems, I suggest a semantic constraint on resultatives: The English resultative construction is acceptable only when the constructional subevents are the direct result of verbal subevents. This constraint means that the English resultatives are described based on the relationship between verbal subevents and constructional subevents.