Beth Levin

Department of Linguistics
Stanford University

Please click on highlighted items to download, view abstract, or obtain additional information.

Papers for downloading are available here. Handouts from short courses are available here.



Recent talk handouts and slides:

with M. Rappaport Hovav, ``Agentivity, Animacy, Prototypicality and Specialized Meaning'', 4th Agency and Intentions in Language Workshop, January 10-12, 2024. (slides; long abstract)

``Variable Agentivity: Polysemy or Underspecification?'', Construction of Meaning Workshop, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, October 6, 2023. (slides)

``Disentangling (Non-)agentivity, Telicity, and Result State'', Workshop on Maximalization Strategies in the Event Domain, University of Debrecen, Debrecen, Hungary, April 17-19, 2023. (slides)

``The door punched open: An Unusual English Resultative Construction'', Resultatives: Recent Approaches and Renewed Perspectives Workshop, National University of Singapore, Singapore, March 20-22, 2023. (slides)

With M. Rappaport Hovav, ``Ways of Constructing Agentivity'', Workshop on Agents: Grammar or Roots?, Annual Meeting of the Linguistic Association of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, September 12-14, 2022. (slides)

``Pounding up the stairs and slamming into the wall: English Hitting Verbs in Motion Event Descriptions'', NAMED 3: De/constructing Motion Events, Paris, France, July 1-2, 2021. (slides)

``Mind Your Manners: Regularity (and Idiosyncrasy) in Manner Verb Argument Realization'', Workshop on the Grammar of Regularity and Idiosyncrasy, LSA Linguistic Institute, University of California, Davis, CA, July 13-14, 2019. (pdf)

``On the Tightness of Resultatives'', Workshop on Recent Approaches to (Non-)Agentivity in Natural Language, National University of Singapore, Singapore, May 3-4, 2019. (pdf)

``Causation: The Perspective from Resultatives'', Sinn und Bedeutung 23, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain, September 5-7, 2018. (pdf)

With B. Krejci, ``Talking about the Weather: Two Construals of Precipitation Events in English'', Unergative Predicates: Architecture and Variation Workshop, Bilbao, Spain, January 18-19, 2018; 20th Semantics Fest, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, March 15-16, 2019. (pdf)

``Talking about the Weather: A Case Study of Precipitation Verbs'', Linguistics Colloquium, University at Buffalo, Buffalo, NY, September 7, 2017. (pdf)

``Resultatives and Causation'', Linguistic Perspectives on Causation Workshop, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem, Israel, June 28-30, 2017. (pdf)

``The Elasticity of Verb Meaning Revisited'', Pre-SALT Workshop on Meaning and Distribution, University of Maryland, College Park, MD, May 11, 2017. (slides in pdf)

With S. Grimm, ``Artifact Nouns: Reference and Countability'', 42nd Annual Meeting of the Northeastern Linguistics Society, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA, October 14-16, 2016. (Poster) (poster in pdf)

With S. Grimm, ``Artifacts: Reference, Countability, and Categorization'', Heinrich-Heine Universität, Düsseldorf, Germany, June 6-7, 2016. (slides in pdf)

``The Ingredients of Nonselected NP Resultatives'', University of Utah Student Conference in Linguistics (UUSCIL), University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT, April 17, 2015. (pdf)

``Resultatives Revisited: Expanding the Empirical Foundations'', Catalonia-Israel Symposium on Lexical Semantics and Grammatical Structure in Event Conceptualization, Language, Logic and Cognition Center, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem, Israel, February 16-18, 2015. (pdf)

``Names for Artifacts and Natural Kinds'', Ninth Mediterranean Morphology Meeting, Dubrovnik, Croatia, September 15-18, 2013. (slides in pdf)

``Resultatives Revisited'', Symposium on Secondary Predication in Formal Frameworks, University of Utrecht, Utrecht, The Netherlands, May 27, 2013. (pdf)

With S. Grimm. ``Who Has More Furniture? An Exploration of the Bases for Comparison'', Mass/Count in Linguistics, Philosophy and Cognitive Science Conference, École Normale Supérieure, Paris, France, December 20-21, 2012. (slides in pdf)

With Tham, S.W. and J. Beavers. ``Directional Interpretations with Locative Adpositions'', The Meaning of P, Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Bochum, Germany, November 23-25, 2012. (Extended abstract, 5 pages, pdf)

``Slap, Give a Slap, Slap a Slap: Crosslinguistic Diversity in Hitting Event Descriptions'', Tenth Biennial Conference of the High Desert Linguistics Society, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM, November 1-3, 2012. (pdf)

``Manner and Result: Implications for Argument Realization Across Languages'', Heinrich-Heine Universität, Düsseldorf, Germany, July 5, 2012. (pdf)

``The Lexicon Project and its Legacy'', 50 Years of Linguistics at MIT, MIT, Cambridge, MA, December 9-11, 2011. (slides in pdf)

``Verb Sensitivity and Argument Realization in Three-Participant Constructions: A Crosslinguistic Perspective'', Conference on Referential Hierarchies in Three-participant Constructions, Lancaster University, May 20-22, 2011. (pdf)

``Verb Classes Within and Across Languages'', Valency Classes Conference, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, April 14-17, 2011. (pdf)

With A. Djalali, S. Grimm, and D. Clausen. ``What Can Be Ground? Noun Type, Constructions, and the Universal Grinder'', 37th Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society, Berkeley, CA, February 12-13, 2011. (slides in pdf)

With S. Grimm. ``Between Count and Mass: Furniture and Other Functional Collectives'', 85th Annual Meeting of the Linguistic Society of America, Pittsburgh, PA, January 6-9, 2011. (slides in pdf)

``Synonymy and Arbitrariness in Linguistic Argumentation'', SKY (The Linguistic Association of Finland) Annual Conference, Helsinki, Finland, October 28-30, 2010. (slides in pdf)

``The Semantic Bases of Japanese and Korean Ditransitives'', 20th Japanese/Korean Linguistics Conference, Oxford University, Oxford, UK, October 1-3, 2010. (pdf)

With D. Clausen, A. Djalali, S. Grimm, S. Lauer, and T. Rojas-Esponda. ``Extension, Ontological Type, and Morphosyntactic Class: Three Ingredients of Countability'', Conference on Empirical, Theoretical and Computational Approaches to Countability in Natural Language, Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Bochum, Germany, September 22-24, 2010. (Extended abstract, 5 pages, pdf; updated slides in pdf)

With M. Rappaport Hovav. ``Lexicalized Scales and Verbs of Scalar Change'', 46th Annual Meeting of the Chicago Linguistic Society, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, April 8-10, 2010. (pdf)

``What is the Best Grain-size for Defining Verb Classes?'', Conference on Word Classes: Nature, Typology, Computational Representations, Second TRIPLE International Conference, Università Roma Tre, Rome, March 24-26, 2010. (pdf)

``Verb Sensitivity in Altaic Ditransitive Sentences'', Sixth Workshop on Altaic Formal Linguistics, Nagoya University, Nagoya, Japan, September 4-6, 2009. (pdf)

With J. Beavers and Tham, S.W. ``Manner of Motion Roots Across Languages: Same or Different?'', Workshop on Roots, Universität Stuttgart, Germany, June 10-12, 2009. (pdf)

``Where Do Verb Classes Come From?'', Verb Typologies Revisited: A Cross-linguistic Reflection on Verbs and Verb Classes, Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium, February 5-7, 2009. (pdf)

``Dative Verbs and Dative Alternations from a Crosslinguistic Perspective'', Department of Linguistics, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, March 18, 2008. This handout supersedes: ``The Crosslinguistic Study of Dative Alternations: A Verb Sensitive Perspective'', with M. Rappaport Hovav, Conference on Ditransitive Constructions, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, November 23-25, 2007. (pdf)

``First Objects and Datives: Two of a Kind?'', Parasession on Theoretical Approaches to Argument Structure, 32nd Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society, University of California, Berkeley, CA, February 10-12, 2006. (pdf)

``Verbs and Constructions: Where Next?'', Western Conference on Linguistics, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, November 12-14, 2004. (pdf)

The following two, somewhat overlapping, handouts present ongoing research into the sources of object alternations; see also Levin (2006) under ``Unpublished manuscripts'':

With M. Rappaport Hovav. ``Roots and Templates in the Representation of Verb Meaning'', Department of Linguistics, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, May 15, 2003. (11 pages; pdf)

``Objecthood and Object Alternations'', Department of Linguistics, UCLA, Los Angeles, CA, May 2, 2003. (13 pages; pdf)


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