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Vendler (1957, 1967) proposes that verb meanings can be classified into four basic classes, known as Vendler's or Vendlerian verb classes, depending on whether they are dynamic or not and whether they are telic or not: (1) 'states', denoting static, non-dynamic, durative situations, e.g., 'know', 'hate'; (2) 'activities', which denote dynamic, durative situations without an endpoint, e.g., 'run', 'drive'; (3) 'accomplishments', which denote dynamic, durative situations with an endpoint, e.g., 'b…

The words of a language can be grouped into the so-called word classes, also known as lexical categories or parts of speech, as e.g., “noun” and “verb”. Word classes group words together according to a number of shared phonological, morphological, syntactic, and semantic properties (Kaltz 2000; Anward 2006). The traditional word classes of the Western grammatical tradition date back at least to Dionysius Thrax’s Technè Grammatikè Τέχνη γραμματική [The art of grammar] (late 2nd century BCE), which identifies eight distinct parts of speech. Given the great crosslinguistic variat…

Brand names play an important role in determining the success or failure of a new product or service (Armstrong and Kotler 1997), influencing its acceptance by the public (Charmasson 1998). Thus brand names are a crucial component of marketing strategies. A well-made brand name should suggest positive connotations and the relevance of the product, be short, distinctive and easy to memorize (Robertson 1989; Kohli and LaBanh 1997). In choosing a brand name one should take into account phonological…

1. Causative Constructions A causative construction denotes a complex event referring to a causative situation, where an initial event (causing event) brings about another event (caused event); see e.g., Shibatani (1976), Comrie (1981), Parsons (1990), Kulikov (2001). From a typological point of view, causatives can be divided into: (1) analytic (or syntactic, periphrastic) causatives, which include both complex predicates and periphrastic causatives with two verbs in different clauses (Dixon 2000:…

Resultative constructions consist of a main verb denoting some event and a secondary predicate expressing the result of the event, as e.g., English I hammered the metal flat. Chinese has two kinds of resultative constructions: the resultative phrase, which has the form V- de 得 VP/S, and resultative V-V compounds.   1. The Resultative Phrase The resultative phrase has been analyzed as a biclausal structure, consisting of a matrix verb and a resultative clause (see e.g., Huang 1988, 1992, Li 1998, 2005), which is structurally represented as the complement of the matrix verb. The morpheme de…

Chinese is widely regarded as a textbook example of the isolating language type, with little morphology and few affixes (Sagart 2004:123). Moreover, the relationship between form and meaning in Chinese morphology is said to be very straightforward, as it has clearly defined morpheme boundaries, no cumulative exponence and no allomorphy or suppletion, i.e., morphemes usually have a single phonological form (see Packard 2006). This, however, does not entail that the study of Chinese morphology is of little interest. First of all, the lexicon of Standard Manda…