The grammar of ‘content’ and ‘container’

Extract

I. In this paper I will examine the systematic alternation in grammatical relations (or functions) of noun phrases in the semantic rôles that I will refer to as ‘content’ and ‘container’ for that class of English verbs which appear in the syntactic frames given in (I):

(I)(a)…V NP₁ IN/ON(TO) NP₂

…load the hay on the waggon

(b)…V NP₂ WITH NP₁

…load the waggon with the hay.

This class of verbs, exemplified by load, spread and spray is particularly interesting because of the claim made in Anderson (1971) that the noun phrase which stands in the grammatical relation of direct object is semantically interpreted as being wholly involved in the action or wholly in the state indicated by the verb. Thus, for verbs that may appear in both of the frames in (I), if Anderson's analysis is correct, the semantic interpretation of structures like (a) and (b) will be distinct in that in (a), NP₁ should be interpreted holistically and NP₂ should not, while in (b), NP₂ should be interpreted holistically, and NP₁ should not. After first examining some general characteristics of this class of verbs, I will point out some problems which are presented by Anderson's analysis.