Verbs of speaking and verbs of thinking

Richard Faure (1)

1 EDITTA - Édition, Interprétation, Traduction des Textes Anciens

In this paper, I address the differences between verbs of speaking (VOS) and verbs of thinking (VOT) with respect to complementation. I argue that even if in a language these two types of verbs share the same construction, that does not allow us to say that they fall into the same class. A cross between Functional Grammar and Generative Grammar provides us with a refined syntactic structure, where, crucially, functional hierarchy is relative rather than absolute. This allows us to deal with different word orders. The proposal is that the verbs in question always undergo a kind of “functionalization”, a process that is related to Cinque's 2004 view of restructuring and makes them acquire certain features of function operators like adverbials. Syntactically, VOS and VOT turn out to occupy separate functional slots. Going back to our starting point, that accounts for observed differences in complement type such as finite- and non-finiteness, absolute or relative temporality etc.

Mots clés: sentence layers; subordination; adverbs; adverbials; functionalization; ancient greek

Mots clés: niveaux de phrase; adverbes; adverbiaux; fonctionnalisation; grec ancien

Domaines: Linguistique

Richard Faure. Verbs of speaking and verbs of thinking. 2009. ⟨hal-00469813⟩