Sebastian Löbner: Frames and Semantics

The talk is a report on ongoing (FOR 600) and planned future research (SFB 800) in several projects on Barsalou frames and their application in linguistics, especially semantics. One part of the talk will discuss the connection between frames and basic types of nouns and concepts, such as sortal, individual, relational and, in particular, functional nouns. These types form a system with common type-shifts mediating among them, one major shifting system being provided by nominal determination. Evidence for this view is collected from typological, statistical, psycholinguistic and historical investigations. Thus, determination can be analysed as a modifying and shifting lexical frame structures.

The second part deals with applications of Barsalou frames to various semantic and pragmatic questions: frames as a format of decomposition of verb meanings beyond Fillmorean case frames; frames in nominal word formation; frames and anaphora.