VerbLex: A verb lexicon model of Greek and German
This project is the construction of a lexical-semantic and morpho-syntactic model for the study of verb classes and their alternations in Greek, in contrast to German. Adopting the hypothesis presented by Levin (1993) that semantic properties of a verb determine the syntactic realization of their arguments, the project compares the grammatical behavior of verb classes like change of state verbs (CoS) (i.e., open, close), break verbs (i.e, break, crack) (s. Levin, 2013, Fillmore, 1970) in Greek in contrast to German, and introduces an analysis of comparative concepts.
The project will be organized across two main pillars: initially, (i) we will offer a theoretical analysis for selected classes of Greek verbs (see ex. 2b-d, 3a,b, 4a,b, 8a-c, 9, 10, 11), while (ii) we will group Greek verbs into classes based on semantic and morpho-syntactic properties and we will provide a comparative analysis with similar classes in German. We will adopt a bottom-up methodology: the verbs will be collected mostly from Greek dictionaries and databases. The Appendix completes the verb lexicon.
Project Phases
Team
Alexander Ziem has been Professor of German Linguistics since 2012 and has held the chair at Heinrich Heine University since 2016. Previously, he researched and taught in Berlin, Basel and at the International Computer Science Institute (ICSI) in Berkeley, among other places.
Professor Ziem's current research focuses on cognitive semantics (frame semantics, conceptual metaphors), construction grammar and the analysis of public language use. In 2016, he launched the long-term project ‘FrameNet and Konstruktikon des Deutschen’ (FrameNet and German Construction Icon), whose overarching goal is to describe contemporary German as a lexical and grammatical resource for the linguistic coding of concepts at the intersection of corpus linguistics, construction iconography, data mining and machine learning, and to make it publicly available in the form of a ‘constructicon’.
His research interests also focus on discursive dimensions of language use, in particular the linguistic constitution of knowledge and the linguistic steering of cognition (framing).