Conclusion

Abstract

Chapter 5 summarizes and synthesizes the results of the overall study. The deeper motivation for why roots would not be subject to constraints such as those required by Bifurcation and Manner/Result Complementarity is explored, whereby the semantic specificity of idiosyncratic root meanings may in some cases require also entailing more basic templatic notions and other types of idiosyncratic meanings. This chapter also considers alternative conditions on roots and why these may not hold. It concludes with an outline of the larger typology of roots this study predicts, and in conjunction with a theory of templates how this typology still makes predictions about possible and impossible verbs despite the fact that root meanings can be as complex and unconstrained as the case studies explored here suggest.