abstract Case

being Case-marked is assumed to be a universal property of overt nominal expressions. Whenever there is no visible marking, we assume there to be invisible Case on the given nominal expression.

abstract light verb

the head position of a vP can be occupied by a phonetically empty light verb.

accusative Case

the case of DPs appearing after verbs, prepositions and visible subjects of infinitival clauses. In English it is visible only on certain pronouns, e.g. him/her.

agent

one of the thematic or theta-roles, where the argument deliberately performs an action, as Jamie in Jamie sang a song or Robert in Robert kicked the cat. In terms of the UTAH the agentive theta-role is assigned to the specifier position of vP, similarly to experiencer arguments.

arguments

the participants minimally involved in an action defined by the predicate. The complements and the subject, the latter also called an external argument.

event structure

verbs can express simple or complex events. Event structure describes what sub-events an event expressed by a certain verb is made up of. This has an effect on the syntactic organisation of elements within the VP. There is supposed to be an isomorphism between event structure and the structure of the VP: a VP breaks up into sub-vPs/VPs in a one-to-one correspondence with the sub-events.

experiencer

one of the thematic or theta-roles where the argument experiences some physical or mental state, like Mary in Mary was afraid of dogs. The experiencer theta-role is assigned in the specifier position of vP, similarly to the agent role. If both an agent and an experiencer argument are selected by the verb there are two vPs projected and the experiencer occupies the specifier position of the lower vP.

isomorphism

a one-to-one correspondence between the members of two sets.

light verb

a verb occupying the head of a vP used in combination with another element, typically a noun or verb, where the light verb’s contribution to the meaning of the whole construction is less than that of a fully thematic main verb, e.g. to take a shower=to shower. Certain verbs expressing aspectual (be, have) or modal (let) meaning also belong here. According to the proposals in the present book the following constituents can appear within the vP in a visible or abstract form (see also vP-shells):

– agentive arguments in the specifier positions

– experiencer arguments in the specifier position

– goal arguments in the double-object construction as specifiers

– the passive -en morpheme in the head of vP

– the aspectual morphemes -en and -ing in the head of vP

– the tense morpheme in the head of vP

morpheme

the smallest meaningful unit. Words can be made up of one or more morphemes. See also bound morpheme, free morpheme.

object

a DP complement immediately following the verb. It can move to the subject position in passive sentences. See also direct object, indirect object.

specifier position

a position defined by X-bar Theory. The specifier is sister to X', daughter of XP. It is a phrasal position, the nature of the phrase depends on what it is the specifier of. E.g. the specifier of IP is the subject, the specifier of DP is the possessor in possessive structures.

subject

the argument that precedes the VP in the sentence. Also called the external argument since it occupies the specifier position of IP, the canonical subject position.

theme

one of the thematic roles where the argument is not affected by the action described by the verb e.g. in Peter saw John nothing directly happens to John as a result of being seen. In terms of the UTAH the theme theta-role is assigned to the specifier position of the VP.

there-construction: see existential there-construction.

theta role

the semantic role of the participants as required by the predicate. E.g. verbs define what kind of semantic relationship is to be established between the verb itself and the arguments of the verb, and arguments are selected accordingly. The verb kick calls for an agent subject, so its subject position cannot be occupied by e.g. my CD-player.

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Basic English Syntax with Exercises

5.2.4.3 Agent and experiencer subjects

What about the event structure of a transitive construction? Above we argued for an isomorphism between the structure of the VP and the structure of the event it describes such that each part of the VP corresponds to a separate sub-event. If transitive verbs involve an agentive light verb, and hence there are two parts to the verbal complex, we should expect that the event described by a transitive verb should consist of two sub-events. But we have just seen that transitives are not causative: Harry hit Ron does not mean that Harry does something that causes Ron to get hit. However, there is not necessarily a direct relationship between what the subject does and the object getting hit. Consider the following:

(84)aHarry hit Ron with his hand
bHarry hit Ron with a stick
cHarry hit Ron with a stone

We can see from these examples there is a sense in which there are two parts to a hitting event: somebody does something and somebody or something gets hit as a more or less direct result of this. There is obviously a very subtle difference between this interpretation and a causative one, which we will not attempt to describe here. The point is that the event structure of the transitive can be represented in a similar way to that of a causative:

(85)e = e1 → e2 :e1 = ‘Harry did something’
e2 = ‘Ron got hit’

Now let us turn our attention to verbs of perception which take experiencer subjects.

(86)aSally saw a ghost
bHarry heard the news
cFred fears the dark

The obvious question that needs to be asked is whether the experiencer subject occupies a similar position to an agent subject or a different one. The choices would seem to be to place the experiencer in the specifier of an abstract light verb, or to place it in the specifier of the thematic verb:

(87) a
   
b

One observation that might be relevant here is that there are some verbs which take both agent and experiencer arguments. With these verbs, the agent always precedes the experiencer:

(88)aFreddy frightened me
bUrsula upset the waiter
cDennis disappointed his parents

Assuming that the agent is in the specifier of a light verb, these observations suggest that the experiencer is in the specifier of the thematic verb, like theme arguments:

(89) 

This would support the structure in (87b) which has the experiencer in the specifier of the thematic VP, as in (89).

A second observation that seems to support (87b) concerns the event structure of transitive verbs with experiencer subjects. Certainly there does not appear to be a causative relationship between what the subject is interpreted as doing and what happens to the object. (86c), for example, does not appear to be interpretable as Fred doing something that results in the dark being feared. Instead it seems that these sentences express a simple state of affairs with no sub-events:

(90)e = e1: e1 = ‘Fred fears the dark’

If there is an isomorphism between event structure and VP structure and (90) is the correct analysis of the event structure involving an experiencer subject transitive verb, then (87b) appears to be the correct structure of the VP.

However, an obvious disadvantage of (87b) is that the theme is placed in the complement position which is counter to what we have previously discovered. If the theme goes in the specifier of the thematic verb, then there is no alternative than to include the experiencer in a higher position which would mean adding an abstract light verb. A further disadvantage of (87b) is that transitive verbs with experiencer subjects can be passivised. We have analysed passivisation as a process which removes the light verb responsible for the assignment of the Θ-role to the subject and the Case to the object, replacing it with the passive morpheme. If there is no light verb responsible for assigning the experiencer Θ-role, it is not at all clear how these verbs could undergo passivisation: what would the passive morpheme replace and why would the experiencer Θ-role and accusative Case go missing? Moreover, the passivisation of these verbs casts doubt on the assumption that they have a simple event structure. Passivisation of agentive verbs by getting rid of the agentive light verb turns a verb with a complex event structure into one with a simple one:

(91)a Harry hit Ron
e = e1 → e2: e1 = ‘Harry did something’
  e2 = ‘Ron was hit’
bRon was hit
e = e1: e1 = ‘Ron was hit’

But if experiencer transitive verbs have a simple event structure and we remove the experiencer, what are we left with? Surely we cannot be left with half an event! This would argue that the event structure of experiencer transitives is similar to that of agentive transitives:

(92)a Fred fears the dark
e = e1 → e2: e1 = ‘Fred experiences something’
  e2 = ‘the dark is feared’
bthe dark is feared
e = e1: e1 = ‘the dark is feared’

To argue for this in any depth, however, would take us beyond the scope of this book and into areas such as psychology and philosophy. Therefore we will assume this to be the case, based on the linguistic arguments so far presented.

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