Abstract

This study investigates the syntax-semantics interface in English Manner of Speaking verbs. Firstly, we propose a fine-grained description of these verbs including the physical auditory components as well as the semantic-pragmatic components. Secondly, we carry out a corpus-based analysis of Manner of Speaking verbs concentrating on fictive path realization. We then employ the lexico-grammatical measures of Attraction and Reliance to verify how these verbs construct with prepositions and/or satellites to elaborate the path that goes from the speaker to the listener. The results show that the bundle of components that describes each verb Manner interfaces with the syntactic choices that elaborate the Path in the encoding of the Manner of Speaking event in English.