How Do Verbs Get Their Names? Denominal verbs, Manner Incorporation, and the Ontology of Verb Roots in English

This chapter presents evidence showing that denominal verbs in English, of both the location/locatum and the unergative variety, are 'measuredout' by the incorporated nominal Root. This strongly supports the l-syntactic approach of Hale and Keyser (1993), since it shows parallel semantic effects of identical structures in overt syntax and l-syntax, and suggests that English Roots of denominal verbs have inherent semantic properties - in particular, 'boundedness' - which determine the effects they produce when they are Incremental Themes. The analysis presented is not obviously compatible with a functional-projection approach to Aktionsart like those of van Hout (2000), Borer (1996), or Ramchand (2001).