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Above and below verbal roots: A case study of English adverbs of results

Paper · 2023 · Hyun Kyoung Jung and Jaehoon Choi

Summary

The paper asks why adverbs that describe the outcome of an event, such as finely in "chopped the onion finely", appear not only with telic accomplishment verbs but also with some atelic activity uses (intransitive paint, write, cook, knit). Other activity verbs, such as pound, scrub and kick, reject them. Working in Distributed Morphology, the authors split the verb phrase into two heads. The first is a Res(ult) head, where resultative adverbs attach; it introduces a resulting state without forcing an end point. The second is the verbalizing v, which carries aspect: v CAUSE for measurable change of state, v DO otherwise. The evidence comes from contrasts with manner adverbs, adverbs that are ambiguous between manner and result readings, and modification of roots that yield both verbs and adjectives. The data are native-speaker judgments, in/for-PP telicity tests and a few COCA examples. The analysis extends to measure adverbs such as partly, which also attach to ResP but need a result root. Result roots adjoin to Res and manner roots adjoin to v. The work matters because it separates "has a result" from "is telic".

Key points

  • Telicity tests ("for/#in two hours") show that The artist painted colorfully stays atelic. A resultative adverb does not coerce an accomplishment reading.
  • Proposed structure: Res is present before the root is categorized by v. Voice introduces the external argument. v comes in the flavors v CAUSE and v DO, partly following Harley (2009).
  • Measure adverbs (Tenny 2000), such as partly and partway, are ResP modifiers like resultative adverbs. Unlike resultative adverbs, they are sensitive to the presence of a result root.
  • The authors derive two diagnostics: one detects ResP and the other detects result roots. Some roots can head-adjoin either to Res, giving a result reading, or to v, giving a manner reading.
  • Resultative adjectives (e.g., red in "painted the fence partly red") may contain their own ResP. They therefore act both as modifiers and as secondary results, whereas adverbs of results act only as modifiers.

Interesting ideas

  • I1. The paper treats "the event produces a result state" and "the event has an end point" as independent features, so an ongoing activity can still yield a describable product.
  • I2. Adverbs are classified by which event component they modify: the result (thinly, colorfully) or the manner of doing (quickly, loudly). Some adverbs are ambiguous between the two.
  • I3. Verbs are split by root type: result roots (paint, write, cook) can host outcome modifiers, while manner-type roots (pound, scrub, kick) cannot, even when both are used atelically.
  • I4. Paired acceptability contrasts ("for vs in two hours", resultative adverb allowed vs starred) work as minimal-pair diagnostics.
  • I5. Attachment height of partly produces two different situations: only the painted part is red, or the whole fence would be red once finished.

For Mova

How these ideas could serve Mova, our small open language model — its files, stages and tests:

  • I1 (world): Event records in the text world could store a result-state slot separately from telicity, so "Carrie wrote illegibly for two hours" still creates illegible writing without implying the task is finished.
  • I2 (frames): When the UD tree gives an advmod on a verb, prag could attach it either to the outcome/patient state or to the agent's activity, using verb class to choose, instead of a single flat "manner" role.
  • I3 (world): This split could be added as a flag in compiled verb-class knowledge beside VerbNet classes. The flag would predict which adverb readings and result inferences are licensed.
  • I4 (learn): Starred variants make natural negative controls in evaluation sets, checking that the system does not infer completion or a result where the grammar does not license one.
  • I5 (answer): QA on such sentences could surface both readings or flag the ambiguity, rather than silently picking one, when asked about the state of the unpainted part.

Our summary of the paper, in our own words — not its text. The work belongs to its authors; read it at the links above.

 Institutions

🎓Chungnam National UniversityDaejeon · South Korea5 works · 13 citations

Also on the byline: Silla University.

 Fields, topics and concepts

📚 Shelves 5The field of science this work belongs to (OpenAlex fields).Arts and Humanities · 16,039 worksLanguage and Linguistics · 15,891 worksPsychology · 1,552 worksExperimental and Cognitive Psychology · 870 worksDevelopmental and Educational Psychology · 499 works

🧭 Topics 1Research subjects and languages the work is about.English · 2,263 works

Cite

Cite as Hyun Kyoung Jung and Jaehoon Choi. 2023. Above and below verbal roots: A case study of English adverbs of results. Glossa: a journal of general linguistics.

The paper itself, not this page. BibTeX from the library's record of the work. DOI 10.16995/glossa.8830

@article{jung2023above,
  title = {{Above and below verbal roots: A case study of English adverbs of results}},
  author = {Hyun Kyoung Jung and Jaehoon Choi},
  journal = {Glossa: a journal of general linguistics},
  year = {2023},
  doi = {10.16995/glossa.8830},
  url = {https://doi.org/10.16995/glossa.8830}
}

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