Experimental insights into denominals and creativity in adult Romanian

Abstract

The current paper investigates denominal verbs through an experiment testing how native Romanian adult speakers prefer to use and understand semi-artificial denominal (non-existent) verbs (SAD verbs) created from existing nouns, such as a cireşi ‘to cherry’ or a vulpi ‘to fox’. Regarding sentence production, speakers generally prefer to use SAD verbs in intransitive frames and with animate subjects. Regarding interpretation, speakers prefer to associate the nouns/ nominal roots SAD verbs derive from with typical activities/states/ behavior, in line with Kiparsky’s (1997) Canonical Use Constraint. Moreover, speakers mostly paraphrase animal and human role SAD verb classes through ‘behave/become like N’ paraphrases, while paraphrasing fruits/vegetables and object SAD verb classes by directly combining typical activities/changes-of-state with N. We provide a mixed cognitive-structural account, arguing that the literal interpretation obtains when the light verb merges with the noun, and the figurative interpretation obtains when the light verb merges with the noun-like root, and that the frequency of the interactions between humans and (in)animate entities and the naturalness of a comparison between them determine the type of interpretation.

Keywords

• denominal verbs
• animacy
• sentence production
• paraphrases
• lexical syntax
• cognition