The Report of the Lecture by Prof. Dr. Lulu Wang (Communication University of China)

The Faculty of Linguistics with the collaboration of the International Office for Scientific Cooperation at the Institute for Humanities and Cultural Studies (IHCS) held a summit on Nov 4^th, 2023. The abstract of this lecture is provided in the following:

Title:

Towards a Lexical or Constructional Analysis on English Resultatives: Review and Reflection

Prof. Dr. Lulu Wang (Communication University of China)

lulu.wang@cuc.edu.cn

There has been extensive debate among linguists regarding the choice of a lexical or constructional approach on resultatives. Goldberg's (1995, 2006) constructionist perspective considers English resultatives as form-meaning pairings, establishing connections between argument structure and semantic interpretation. However, when examining Müller's (2006, 2007, 2013) analysis of German and Yuctaec Maya data, it becomes apparent that the multiple inheritance relations and the excessive productivity of constructions pose challenges for this approach. This paper aims to discuss the advantages and disadvantages of the constructional analysis by examining the sentences "John hammered the metal flat" and "John ran his sneakers threadbare" as examples. Additionally, we provide a lexical analysis based on the complex predicates account and compare the two approaches in terms of theoretical considerations and practical implementations. The study demonstrates that the lexical approach is more competitive in analyzing valence alternation processes in resultatives and is more commonly used in grammar engineering applications.