The meaning of zero nouns and zero verbs
Verginica Barbu Mititelu, Gianina Iordăchioaia, Svetlozara Leseva, Ivelina Stoyanova
Abstract
We carry out a large-scale study of noun-verb zero derivation pairs in English in order to identify possible semantic contrasts between the two derivational directions: V-to-N (zero nouns) and N-to-V (zero verbs). We compile a dataset of 4,879 N-V word sense pairs from the Princeton WordNet, which are annotated for noun and verb semantic classes and are assigned a morphosemantic relation. These sense pairs are labelled with a derivational direction from the Oxford English Dictionary. This makes it possible to investigate, on the one hand, the morphosemantic relations and, on the other hand, the noun and verb semantic classes that typically associate with each direction of zero derivation with the aim of offering a better understanding of the semantics involved in this morphological process.