Abstract

This study demonstrates that lexicons of individual languages reflect some of the functions encoded in their grammatical system. These functions determine the syntactic properties of lexical items. Since the grammatical functions coded across languages vary, so do lexicons in individual languages. This study explains the origin of features of lexical items that affect their syntactic properties. Such features have been noted by others, e.g. Levin and Rappaport-Hovav, 2005 and Ramchand, 2014, but their origin has been left unexplained. The study also raises one fundamental question that remains to be answered: Is there some principle by which some functions encoded in the grammatical system of a language are reflected in the lexicon and other functions are not? The present study considers several hypotheses to answer this question. The study also explains a long-time question in the theory of lexical semantics, viz. why verbs that refer to the same notions or events, e.g. breaking, hearing, or running, and nouns that refer to the same entities, e.g. the place where one lives, body parts, or water, have different syntactic properties across languages.

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