In this paper, I discuss the issues of compositionality and polysemy
as they relate to current accounts of verbal alternations in
linguistic theory. I first explore generally how alternations can be
seen as emerging from a semantic theory that takes advantage of
lexical underspecification and generative mechanisms of
composition. Such well-studied alternations such as
causative-inchoative and control-raising pairs can be successfully
analyzed as resulting from the interaction of richer modes of
composition and a semantics admitting of underspecified
representations. I then examine a particular alternation involving
verbs such as risk and cost, as well as cognate object
verbs such as dance and butter. I refer to this
alternation as lexical shadowing. This alternation is
interesting because it cuts across the traditional categories as
presented in Levin (1993).
I discuss the current major analyses of such verbs, and show that
these solutions fail to capture the lexical polymorphism in the
alternation, and are only weakly compositional at best. I show how the
complement behavior of verbs such as risk involves coercion on
an underspecified lexical semantic representation.
I close with a discussion of the selectional properties of complex
relations such as read and rent, and how this impacts
the theory of closure.
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