Modeling the Induced Action Alternation and the Caused-Motion Construction with Tree Adjoining Grammar (TAG) and Semantic Frames

The induced action alternation and the caused-motion construction are two phenomena that allow English verbs to be interpreted as motion-causing events. This is possible when a verb is used with a direct object and a directional phrase, even when the verb does not lexically signify causativity or motion, as in “Sylvia laughed Mary off the stage”. While participation in the induced action alternation is a lexical property of certain verbs, the caused-motion construction is not anchored in the lexicon. We model both phenomena with XMG-2 and use the TuLiPA parser to create compositional semantic frames for example sentences. We show how such frames represent the key differences between these two phenomena at the syntax-semantics interface, and how TAG can be used to derive distinct analyses for them.