Aspectual and Lexical Semantic Properties of Turkish and English Denominal Verbs

Abstract

This study attempts to describe lexical and aspectual properties of Turkish and English denominal verbs. Using Clark & Clark’s (1979) semantic classes for denominal verbs, the study limits its data with location, locatum and goal denominal verbs whose nominal bases denote a thing. In considering the analogy between mass/count distinction in the spatial dimension displayed by nouns and telic/atelic distinction in the temporal dimension exhibited by events, present study discusses the effect of inherent semantic features of base nouns in determining the aspectual properties of location, locatum and goal verbs in Turkish and in English. This study also focuses on the variable aspectual nature of locatum verbs with mass noun bases and explains this variability by using the means of scalar semantics.