A Dynamical Basis for the Semantic Content of Verbs
Paul R. Cohen, Tim Oates · 1998
Much of what we know and say refers to the dynam-ics of our world. Here we include our physical world, as well as our mental world, the world of social inter-actions, and other not-entirely-physical environments. We have a large class of linguistic objects- verbs-devoted entirely to expressing dynamics. Subtle dif-ferences in the meanings of verbs, which linguists call "manner", are also often dynamical (Talmy 1985). For instance, the difference between "nudge " and "shove" is partly a matter of mass, movement, and energy transfer from one body to another; and partly a matter of intention. In this paper we present a dynamical representa-tion sufficiently general and expressive to capture both