About

John Beavers is the Department Chair and the Robert D. King Centennial Professor of Liberal Arts at the University of Texas at Austin. He is a faculty member within the College of Liberal Arts, specializing in syntax, semantics, and lexical semantics. His role involves leading academic and research initiatives within the department, contributing to the advancement of linguistic studies, and supporting students and faculty in the field of linguistics.

Research topics

• Computer Science
• Philosophy
• Linguistics
• Artificial Intelligence
• Mathematics
• Psychology
• Communication
• Epistemology

Selected publications

• Covert Reciprocals in Indonesian

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2024-01-01

  preprintOpen accessSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• Middle voice as generalized argument suppression

  Natural Language & Linguistic Theory · 2022-06-13 · 2 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• What Makes a Paper Appropriate for <i>Language</i> ?

  Language · 2021-06-01 · 1 citations

  editorialSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• States and changes of state: A crosslinguistic study of the roots of verbal meaning: Supplementary material

  Language · 2021-01-01

  article1st authorCorresponding

  States and changes of state: A crosslinguistic study of the roots of verbal meaningSupplementary material John Beavers, Michael Everdell, Kyle Jerro, Henri Kauhanen, Andrew Koontz-Garboden, Elise LeBovidge, and Stephen Nichols Related article: https://muse.jhu.edu/article/806345 [Download PDF file] Supplemental materials on language references This PDF file contains a list of the grammar and dictionary resources used to collect data for the typological study in the main article. [Download PDF file] Supplemental materials on alternative statistical treatments This PDF file outlines the alternative statistical treatments to those applied to the typological data set in the main article. This includes the same statistical tests as used in the article but including hypotheticalized data points, as well as Monte Carlo simulations for those tests with and without hypotheticals to show that the procedure of randomly selecting synonyms for a given data point did not introduce bias into the results. It also includes a set of generalized linear mixed models to provide an alternative means of supporting the main hypotheses from the article. John Beavers The University of Texas at Austin Michael Everdell The University of Texas at Austin Kyle Jerro University of Essex Henri Kauhanen University of Konstanz Andrew Koontz-Garboden The University of Manchester Elise LeBovidge University of Washington Stephen Nichols The University of Manchester Copyright © 2021 The Linguistic Society of America

  PublisherDOI

• States and Changes of State: A Crosslinguistic Study of the Roots of Verbal Meaning

  Language · 2021 · 17 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Linguistics
  • Psychology
  • Communication

  What are the basic building blocks of verb meanings, how are they composed into more complex meanings, and how does this explain the grammatical properties of verbs and their relationships to other words with related meanings? These questions are fundamental to the study of verb meaning, and some of the most fruitful attempts to answer them have come from event-structural theories, wherein verb meanings are assumed to be decomposed into an event template, which captures the verb's broad temporal and causal contours, and an idiosyncratic root shared across templates, which describes specific actions and states for a given verb. An open question is what the division of labor is between the template and the root in a given verb's event template, and whether their meanings are bifurcated: are broad eventive lexical entailments introduced only by the templates, never the idiosyncratic roots? Since event templates and not roots are the primary semantic correlates of a verb's grammatical properties, bifurcation would make strong predictions about the correlation of a verb's broad temporal and causal semantics and its syntax and morphology. We argue against this bifurcation by comparing translation equivalents of Levin's (1993) non-deadjectival vs. deadjectival change-of-state verb roots in English (e.g. result vs. property concept roots) across languages. A broad-scale typological study reveals that property concept roots tend to have unmarked stative forms and marked verbal forms, while result roots have the opposite pattern. Semantic studies of several languages confirm that terms built on result roots always entail change, while terms based on property concept roots do not. This supports a theory wherein result roots entail change independent of the template, contra bifurcation. This supports a more complex, albeit still principled, theory of possible event-structural meaning and its grammatical correlates, one that takes subclasses of roots into account, while showing the value of this type of crosslinguistic methodology for testing the predictions of event-structural approaches.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Entailments of change in the roots of change-of-state verbs

  2020-03-19

  book-chapterOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract Chapter 2 examines the semantic and morphological predictions of Bifurcation, focusing on the roots of change-of-state verbs and their stative correlates. Using evidence from entailment, morphology, and sublexical modification it shows that English verbal roots fall into two classes. The flat class describe simple states, while the crack class describe states but also entail that the state came about from change, a templatic notion. A formal analysis of the semantic and morphological properties of the two classes is proposed, albeit one that rejects Bifurcation. It then considers a variety of alternative analyses that preserve Bifurcation, which all come at some theoretical and empirical cost.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Manner/Result Complementarity and causation in verbal roots

  2020-03-19

  book-chapterOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract Chapter 4 explores the question of Manner/Result Complementarity. It proposes that there are systematic verb classes that entail both meanings at once, including verbs of manner of killing, cooking, and ballistic motion, demonstrated by applying various diagnostics for manner and result in a verb’s meaning and showing that certain verb classes pass both sets of tests. Data from sublexical modification further show that the manner and result meanings are both coming from the sole root, arguing against an alternative by which manner plus result verbs have two roots, each introducing one meaning. The roots of these verbs can either be syntactically like canonical manner roots or canonical stative roots, and a formal analysis for how roots of each type can introduce both meanings at once is developed. These roots also all entail causation as well, arguing once again against Bifurcation.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Intentionality, scalar change, and non-culmination in Korean caused change-of-state predicates

  Linguistics · 2020 · 18 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Computer Science
  • Linguistics
  • Mathematics

  Abstract This paper investigates the interpretations of caused change-of-state predicates in Korean, and in particular non-culmination readings in which the result state inherent to the meaning of the predicate fails to obtain either fully (zero result) or partially. We argue that zero result readings require that the subject intended the coming about of the result state, while readings in which some result obtains (partially or completely) lack this entailment. Yet zero result interpretations are not reducible to ‘try’-constructions since the former but not the latter require the direct causation. Furthermore, zero result readings arise only in active voice, a grammatical constraint not explicitly discussed for other languages. We argue that the full suite of possible readings arises from two factors: a sublexical modality over worlds conforming to the agent’s intentions for zero result readings that arises from a special active voice inflection in Korean and a scalar semantics for change-of-state verbs that derives partial result readings as a type of degree achievement interpretation. An interaction of these two factors produce the range of possible readings for Korean change-of-state predicates. Finally, we discuss our account in relation to the Agent Control Hypothesis of Demirdache and Martin (2015) that agentivity properties of the subject are necessary for certain non-culmination readings, and suggest that Korean exemplifies the ACH provided that what counts as “control” includes intentionality.

  PublisherDOI

• Conclusion

  2020-03-19

  book-chapterOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract Chapter 5 summarizes and synthesizes the results of the overall study. The deeper motivation for why roots would not be subject to constraints such as those required by Bifurcation and Manner/Result Complementarity is explored, whereby the semantic specificity of idiosyncratic root meanings may in some cases require also entailing more basic templatic notions and other types of idiosyncratic meanings. This chapter also considers alternative conditions on roots and why these may not hold. It concludes with an outline of the larger typology of roots this study predicts, and in conjunction with a theory of templates how this typology still makes predictions about possible and impossible verbs despite the fact that root meanings can be as complex and unconstrained as the case studies explored here suggest.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• The roots of ditransitive verbs of caused possession

  2020-03-19 · 2 citations

  book-chapterOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract Chapter 3 examines English ditransitive verbs, which show the dative alternation between indirect object and to frames, each supposedly reflecting a different template for a single manner-describing root. It shows that these two templates are semantically highly underspecified, and it is the root that fleshes out many of the surface verb’s basic entailments. These entailments include change-of-state, possession, and co-location, all of which are independently known to be templatic meanings, arguing again against Bifurcation. The root also governs whether the verb even shows the dative alternation, a root-conditioned syntactic effect. A formal analysis of root/template composition is developed that relies on manner roots being able to impose conditions on the template’s result states in ways that predict the verb’s grammatical and semantic behavior. Counterproposals that might retain Bifurcation are also considered, though it is argued that they are dispreferred for various reasons.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Recent grants

• The Meaning of Verbal Roots Across Languages

  NSF · $305k · 2015–2020

Frequent coauthors

• Andrew Koontz‐Garboden

  University of Manchester

  19 shared

• Cala Zubair

  3 shared

• Henri Kauhanen

  3 shared

• Kyle Jerro

  3 shared

• Elise LeBovidge

  Modern Language Association

  3 shared

• Michael Everdell

  The University of Texas at Austin

  3 shared

• Stephen G. Nichols

  3 shared

• Stephen Wechsler

  MGH Institute of Health Professions

  2 shared