Lexical semantic factors in the acceptability of english support-verb-nominalization constructions

Abstract

We explore the properties of support-verb and nominalization (SVN) pairs in English, a type of multiword expression in which a semantically impoverished verb combines with a complement nominalization sharing an unexpressed role with the verb. This study follows others in seeking syntactic or lexical semantic factors correlated with the acceptability of these constructions. In particular, following recent work showing certain semantic verb class features to improve SVN classification [Tu and Roth 2011], we explore the possibility that support verbs and the verbal roots of nominalizations in acceptable SVN pairs are clustered according to the classes of Levin [1993]. We compare the compatibility correlation of these results with those of the Aktionsart-class-based proposal of Barrett and Davis [2002]. We find the evidence that Levin classes are a factor in the acceptability of SVN constructions to be equivocal, and conclude with a discussion of the reasons for this finding.