tricky light/secondary verb example

[jakpra]

For the sentence I follow my father 's trade, I can see the following analyses:

1a) - follow is main predicate, father is Elaborator with remote edge
I_A follow_P [ [ [ my_A father_S ]_A 's_R (trade)_P ]_E trade_C ]_A

1b) - follow is main predicate, father is participant
I_A follow_P [ [ my_A father_S 's_R ]_A trade_P ]_A

2. • trade is main predicate, follow is secondary, licensing the additional participant my father
     I_A follow_D [ my_A father_S 's_R ]_A trade_P

I like this the most, even though it fails to express the diachronicity of the father's and my trading.

3. • follow trade is LVC and main predicate
     I_A [ follow_F trade_C ]_P ...

What to do with my father in this case? Participant? Or parallel scene with remote edge to (follow) trade?

[nschneid]

Are there paraphrases to support the notion that 'follow' is a light verb? The paraphrases I can think of involve comparatives ("My trade is the same as my father's") and augmentative constructions ("My father's trade is X, and so is mine"; "My trade is X, which is also my father's").

As you say, the following presumably happens at a different place and time than the original trade, so it doesn't seem to fit the mold for secondary verbs. It's not merely aspectual, but involves some notion of imitation. In "I imitated the cat" and "I imitated the cat's meowing", the imitation event seems pretty well distinct from what the cat does, even if we may infer from the meaning of 'imitate' that it also involves meowing.

Thus I like (1a) or (1b).

There's a separate question of whether annotators could reliably identify "my work/trade/career/..." as scene-evoking, given that it doesn't specify any particular manner of working.

[omriabnd]

I think 1b. 1 for similar reasons as Nathan pointed out (the separate events). 1b is better than 1a since *my father* is a participant in the trade event. Btw, if there's one thing the Dagstuhl seminar taught me is that we need an event-event relation ontology. I'll fwd one to you (starting point)

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On Mon, Apr 22, 2019 at 12:34 AM Nathan Schneider ***@***.***> wrote: Are there paraphrases to support the notion that 'follow' is a light verb? The paraphrases I can think of involve comparatives ("My trade is the same as my father's") and augmentative constructions ("My father's trade is X, and so is mine"; "My trade is X, which is also my father's"). As you say, the *following* presumably happens at a different place and time than the original trade, so it doesn't seem to fit the mold for secondary verbs. It's not merely aspectual, but involves some notion of imitation. In "I imitated the cat" and "I imitated the cat's meowing", the imitation event seems pretty well distinct from what the cat does, even if we may infer from the meaning of 'imitate' that it also involves meowing. Thus I like (1a) or (1b). There's a separate question of whether annotators could reliably identify "my work/trade/career/..." as scene-evoking, given that it doesn't specify any particular manner of working. — You are receiving this because you are subscribed to this thread. Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <#59 (comment)>, or mute the thread <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/ACA3Z27ONUCOCW4NK5WY5CTPRTMXFANCNFSM4HHMJW3A> .