Department of Chinese, Translation and Linguistics
Research Seminar
Change of Location, Abstraction, and Telicity
Presented by
Professor Chungmin Lee
Professor Emeritus of Linguistics and Cognitive Science
Seoul National University
Date: 8 January 2010 (Friday) [revised]
Time: 4:30 - 6:00pm
Venue: B7603 (Lift 3, 7/F, Blue Zone), Academic Building, CityU [revised]
Abstract
This talk basically discusses parallels and differences between change of location and change of state. Change of state may be derived from change of location (or motion) verbs involving Goal, when Goal is conceptualized as being globally affected, bringing about cross-linguistically variant case alternations. Change of state is analogous to change of location, involving an abstract state Source and an abstract state Goal. Spatial change is least abstract, whereas temporal change and state change are more abstract and psychological change is most abstract, exhibiting various phenomena of degree modification and telicity differentiations. Abstraction causes argument reduction and change in syntactic behavior. State-oriented predicates are modified by the equivalents of the degree modifier 'very' and process-oriented ones by the quality modifier 'well' and its equivalents.
Speaker
Professor Chungmin Lee, graduated from College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, Seoul National University (1963) and received his doctoral degree in linguistics at Indiana University. He has been teaching Linguistics and Cognitive Science at Seoul National University since 1973 in the Department of Linguistics and Cognitive Science Program of the University. He also taught at UCLA (1986-88) and LSA Linguistic Institutes (UCSC-1991, UCSB - 2001, Michigan State- 2003). He has published articles in leading journals in Linguistics including Language, Linguistic Inquiry, Foundations of Language, Language Sciences and so on. He has worked on (in)definites, negative polarity, topic-focus, tense-aspect-modality, anaphora, argument structure, speech acts, in semantics, syntax, pragmatics, language acquisition and natural language processing. He served on the editorial board of Linguistics and Philosophy (1997-2003) and Journal of East Asian Linguistics (1999-2002, as area editor: 1992-1998), and served as an Editor of Pragmatics (2001-2006), and is currently on the advisory editorial board of Journal of Pragmatics (2001-), was on the special editorial board of The Journal of the Linguistic Society of Japan (2001-2008), and currently editor-in chief of Journal of Cognitive Science.
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