Schematicity vs. lexicality: typological differences between Danish and Spanish

• Published in: Acta linguistica hafniensia Vol. 55; no. sup1; pp. 104 - 126
• Main Authors: Müller, Henrik Høeg, Morata, Antonio
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Copenhagen Routledge 15.12.2023; Taylor & Francis Ltd
• Subjects: Aktionsart; Comparative linguistics; Contrastive analysis; Danish language; Language typology; Lexicalization; lexicalization patterns; Lexicon; Motion; motion events; schematicity; Semantic features; Semantic processing; Sentence structure; Spanish language; telicity; Typological contrasts; Valence; Verbs
• ISSN: 0374-0463; 1949-0763
• DOI: 10.1080/03740463.2023.2254650

The aim of this article is to demonstrate how Danish and Spanish from a typological, cross-linguistic perspective differ systematically from each other both within the domain of verbal lexicalization patterns related to the encoding of the semantic components Motion, Manner and Path and in terms of the predicate formation strategies dominating the two languages. First, on the basis of a contrastive analysis between the Spanish Motion-Path conflating verb pairs meter 'insert'/sacar 'extract' and entrar 'enter'/salir 'exit' and the Danish activity/Manner-of-motion verbs sprøjte 'spray' and stikke 'stick', it is argued that each language disposes of sets of abstract lexemes that do not exist in the other language. They lexicalize on different levels, one could say. Second, and strongly related to the first point, the article suggests that the preference of Danish to create complex schematic expression structures, where Spanish tends to concentrate information in monomorphemic, semantically saturated lexemes, can be explained by applying a template for valence variation that distinguishes between two basic and two extended sentence structures. Specifically, it is the (im)possibility of realizing the so-called A relation, the 'third' argument, that constitutes the differentiating factor between Danish and Spanish.