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Locative semantic diathesis in Czech

Publication at Faculty of Mathematics and Physics |
2011

Abstract

In this paper, we deal with locative semantic diathesis in Czech from a lexicographic point of view. We distinguish semantic diatheses from grammatical diatheses as two types of changes in valency structure of verbs.

In case of grammatical diatheses, these changes arise from changes in correspondence of valency complements and surface syntactic positions and they are regular enough to be described by formal syntactic rules. In contrast, semantic diatheses are characterized by the changes in mapping of semantic participants and valency complements.

Changes in valency structure of verbs associated with semantic diatheses vary even within one type of diathesis so that they cannot be described by formal syntactic rules. For the purpose of the description of semantic diatheses, we propose to set separate valency frames corresponding to the members of semantic diatheses and to capture the relevant changes in valency structure by general lexical rules based on an appropriate formal representation of meaning