A Study of the Semantic Features of “Obtaining†Verbs in English

Abstract

“Obtaining†verbs depict a person taking temporary possession of an object. They signal an event of the transferring of one thing from its original owner to a potential possessor. Based on theories of Cognitive Semantics, this paper intends to probe into the semantic features of English “obtaining†verbs and the different profiles, background frames entailed in different words, hoping to shed light on the further study of the syntactic performance of this category of verbs.