“Sie rasseln und scheppern die Straße entlang”: Towards a Conceptual Semantics framework for modelling Path Superimposition effects

Introduction: The problem. Levin (1993, ‘verb classes’), Levin and Rappaport Hovav (1995), Maienborn (1994), Talmy (1985, in his study of lexicalisation patterns), as well as many others, deal with the phenomenon of verbs that lexically do not provide a path slot but nevertheless combine with a path-PP. Most prominent examples of this effect can be found, in Levin’s (1993) classification, in the Verbs of sound emission (example: ‘rumble into the driveway’) and in the Verbs of body-internal motion (example: ‘wobble over the road’). Levin proposes that such verbs “may take on a meaning that involves directed displacement when they are found with a directional or goal prepositional phrase.” Due to Levin, “in the presence of such a prepositional phrase, the verb takes on an extended sense that might be paraphrased as ‘go by V -ing’ ”. As a consequence, in Levin’s theory these verbs change from activity verbs (in the Vendler sense) in absence of a goal phrase to accomplishments when a goal-phrase is added.