Aspectual Roles and the Syntax-Semantics Interface

This book presents a theory of the interface between lexical semantics and syntax, in which aspect plays a central role. The aspectual properties that figure in the linking between syntax and semantics are expressed through `aspectual roles', assigned by a verb to its arguments. A number of lexical semantic phenomena can be expressed as operations over aspectual roles, and syntactic phenomena can be classified according to whether or not they are sensitive to the presence of aspectual roles. The theory is independent of any particular model of syntax (such as GB or LFG). This theory proposes a modular relationship between aspectual role information, and conceptual or thematic representations of lexical semantic information. Language-specific generalizations about linking are argued to be expressed in thematic or conceptual representations, while universal linking generalizations are expressed in aspectual representations. Consequently, this theory has implications for language acquisition. A number of recent works have treated aspect of lexical semantics or argument structure in their own right, but none have focused on aspect as central in the relation between lexical semantics and syntactic argument structure.