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Paper short abstract:

This paper provides a lexical-semantic analysis of verb-noun compounds that ambiguously denote an event and a thing, e.g. 'wasure-mono' (forget-thing) 'a lost property'. I will explicate how the denoted meanings are created and disambiguated in the combinatory process of verbs and their arguments.

Paper long abstract:

There is a class of verb-noun compounds in Japanese that ambiguously denote an event or a thing depending on the context that they are used in. For instance, compound nouns such as 'wasure-mono' (forget-thing) 'a lost property' and 'hiroi-mono' (pick-up-thing) 'a found property' may refer to an event in combination with the light verb 'suru' (do) as in "wasure-mono o suru" (forget-thing ACC do) 'lose something', or refer to a concrete object with a regular verb as in "wasure-mono o todokeru" (forget-thing ACC report) 'report a lost property'. On the other hand, however, compounds such as 'nomi-mono' (drink-thing) 'a drink' and 'tabe-mono' (eat-thing) 'food', despite being in the same word form, may only denote an object as in "nomi-mono o kau" (drink-thing ACC buy) 'buy a drink', rejecting an event reading with the light verb as in "*nomi-mono o suru" (drink-thing ACC do) 'have a drink'. Why do 'wasure-mono (a lost property)' and 'hiroi-mono (a found property)' exhibit event/thing homomorphism; whereas, 'nomi-mono (a drink)' and 'tabe-mono (food)' do not? Why do 'wasure-mono' and 'hiroi-mono', although they have seemingly an object-denoting form, denote an event in combination with a light verb? I would like to address those questions and attempt to show a lexical-semantic analysis of those compounds in terms of the Generative Lexicon theory (Pustejovsky 1995).

Moreover, there are some more examples that show event/thing homomorphism. Compounds such as 'hari-gami' (paste-paper) 'poster' and 'sasi-mizu' (add-water) 'added water' may denote an event with the light verb 'suru' (do) or denote an object with regular verbs. In light of the fact that event-denoting nominal compounds consist of a combination of a noun and a nominalized verb head (ren-yookei) like 'kingyo-sukui' (goldfish-catch) 'goldfish-catch', the above-mentioned compounds are exceptional in form. If the order of verb-noun is reversed, the reversed N-V compounds only denote events, i.e. 'kami-hari' (paper-paste) 'to paste paper' and 'mono-wasure' (thing-forget) 'forgetfulness'. Through a lexical-semantic analysis of those compounds, I will explicate how event/thing homomorphism takes place and how the denoted meanings are disambiguated in the combinatory process of verbs and their arguments.