The syntax and semantics interface of present-day and Old English speech verbs: say and tell versus secgan and tellan

• Marta María González Orta ^[1]
  1. [1] Universidad de La Laguna

     Universidad de La Laguna

     San Cristóbal de La Laguna, España

     
• Localización: Journal of English Studies, ISSN 1576-6357, Nº 3, 2001-2002, págs. 81-98
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • The aim of this paper is to analyse the syntax-semantics interface of the Old English speech verbs secgan and tellan, and the Present-day English speech verbs say and tell, respectively, in order to show the differences in each language when linking their syntactic and semantic representations. In this analysis the concept of lexical template has been applied as a lexical representation which includes syntactic and semantic information within the same format and allows us to capture linguistic regularities. Moreover, taking into account the syntactic alternations of these verbs a comparison between them will be established in terms of the degree of semantic prototypicality that they show within their respective domains and with respect to their transitivity