Verbal roots

The meaning of a verbal root in the sense of Beavers and Koontz-Garboden, in its two halves: the kinds of lexical entailment it carries (§5.2.1, Root.Kinds), which fix its class, and its within-class content (Root.Content), which tells it apart from the other members of the class. Root.closedKinds completes the signature under the collocational restrictions (Root.Kinds.close). A root composes with v either as its complement, the result position of change-of-state roots such as √flat and √drown, or adjoined to it as a modifier, the manner position of √jog and √hand (§4.5.3–4.5.4); position is the second coordinate of the book's root typology (§5.4.1, (12)), a fact about where a root merges rather than about what it means, so it is not part of Root. Participant entailments are the separate linking layer ArgumentStructure.EntailmentProfile.

Main declarations

• Root — a root's kind signature and content
• Root.closedKinds — the signature closed under the collocational restrictions
• Root.Position — complement of v or adjoined to it

References

• Beavers & Koontz-Garboden 2020, The Roots of Verbal Meaning formalized
• Spalek & McNally 2026, The anatomy of a verb formalized