Ken Hale's Prolegomenon to a Theory of Argument Structure (Linguistic PDF

By Ken Hale

ISBN-10: 0262083086

ISBN-13: 9780262083089

ISBN-10: 0585444714

ISBN-13: 9780585444710

This paintings is the fruits of an eighteen-year collaboration among Ken Hale and Samuel Jay Keyser at the research of the syntax of lexical goods. It examines the speculation that the habit of lexical goods might be defined in phrases of a truly small variety of extremely simple rules. specifically, a lexical merchandise is assumed to undertaking a syntactic configuration outlined over simply kinfolk, supplement and specifier, the place those configurations are restricted to hinder generation and to allow basically binary branching. The paintings examines this speculation by means of methodically numerous buildings in English and different languages.

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Extra resources for Prolegomenon to a Theory of Argument Structure (Linguistic Inquiry Monographs)

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Ii. b. i. ii. c. i. ii. I cut the bread. This bread cuts easily. He sliced the salami. Salami slices easily. She dented the fender. This fender dents easily. Transitivity Alternations d. i. ii. e. i. ii. 5 45 That angered me. I anger easily. The dog frightened the chicken. Chickens frighten easily. Final Remarks Our purpose here has been to address certain apparent shortcomings in the theory according to which argument structure is defined solely in terms of complement and specifier relations. We maintain that these shortcomings are not, properly speaking, failings in our conception of argument structure.

We assume with a number of other writers (see Ackema and Schoorlemmer 1995; Rapoport 1997) that the middle lacks an external argument. Consider again verbs like shelve or saddle, which freely enter into the middle construction. The structure is essentially that shown in (28), abstracting away from conflation. (28) Under ‘‘ordinary’’ circumstances, a verb with this structure will form a predicate in sentential syntax and will take an external argument, its subject. The bare noun will have conflated with the empty P at Merge, P will Transitivity Alternations 43 have conflated with V at Merge, and the DP in the internal specifier position will be Case-licensed by the locally c-commanding V.

Patient-manner verbs belong to the alternating type, of course, the lexical semantic adverbial feature being associated with an internal argument. By contrast, P-complemented verbs of the steadfastly transitive type might be termed agent-manner verbs. (13) a. *Mud smeared on the wall. (cf. ) b. *White pipeclay daubed on the dancers’ bodies. (cf. ) 36 Chapter 2 c. *Quarter moons stamped on the leather. (cf. ). We propose that it is the circumstance just described that prevents the nonalternating verbs from appearing in the otherwise freely available intransitive configuration (10).

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Prolegomenon to a Theory of Argument Structure (Linguistic Inquiry Monographs) by Ken Hale


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