Argument Structure and Argument Structure Alternations

59 Pages·2011·0.38 MB·English

Argument Structure and Argument Structure
Alternations
Chapter9 ofTheCambridgeHandbookofGenerativeSyntax
GillianRamchand
UniversityofTromsø/CASTL
1 Introduction
One of the major scientific results of Chomskian syntactic theory is the understand-
ing that the symbolic representations of natural language are structured, by which I
meanthatsymbolsareorganizedinhierarchicalconstituentdatastructures,andarenot
simplylinearlyorderedstringsorlistsofmemorizeditems. Thesemantic‘arguments’
ofpredicatesareexpressedwithinnaturallanguagedatastructures,andthereforealso
formpartofstructuredrepresentations.Thischapterisdevotedtoexaminingthemajor
theoretical results pertaining to the semantics of verbal predicate argument relations
andtheirsystematicpatterninginlanguage. However,we willsee thatevenisolating
thelogicaldomainofinquirywillinvolvecertaindeepquestionsaboutthearchitecture
ofgrammar,andtherelationshipbetweenlistednessandcompositionalsemantics.
Historically,themostimportantresultsinargumentstructurehavecomefromthose
studyingthepropertiesoftheLexiconasamoduleofgrammar,foranumberofrather
naturalreasonsas we will see. While this chapterwill aim to givethe readera clear
historicalandideologicalcontextforthesubjectmatterandwilldocumentmajorinflu-
entialstrandsofresearch,itwillprimarilyconcentrateonextractingthegeneralizations
thatIjudgetobethelastingresultsofthepastfiftyyears,andthensecondarily,draw
attentiontothe(stillunresolved)architecturalandtheoreticalissuesthatarespecificto
thisdomain.
Section 2 gives the perspectiveon the issues from the vantage point of the Lexi-
con,i.e. thepracticalproblemofdecidinghowmuchandwhatkindofinformationis
necessaryforthelistingofverballexicalentries. Italsoservesasakindofhistorical
contextualizationandbackgroundforthelatersectionsofthearticlewhichdescribethe
morphosyntacticpatternsmoregenerally.Section3givesamorphosyntacticoverview
ofthepatternsinargumentstructurerelatedtoSUBJECT selection. Section4doesthe
samefortheOBJECTposition.Whilesections3and4arebasicallyaboutgrammatical
function,section 5 reviewsthe correlationswith oneother importantinteractingsyn-
tacticphenomenon,namelycase(seealsochapter17,thisvolume).Section6explores
therelationshipbetweenargumentstructureandthearchitecturalinterfaces,discussing
in particularthe interactionwith discourseandcognitivefacts(6.1),and themodular
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interactionbetweentheLexiconandthesyntacticcomputation(6.2)inaccountingfor
argumentstructuregeneralizations.
2 The View from the Lexicon
The history of isolating ‘argument structure’ as a distinct domain of inquiry in the
modernerabeginswithnotionsofsubcategorizationandthespecificationoftheinfor-
mationthataspeakerknowswhentheyknowindividualwords(specifically,verbs)in
theirlanguage. Thus,itwasrecognizedearlyonthatPhraseStructurerulesneededto
besupplementedwithaLexiconthatstatedconditionsofinsertionforindividualitems,
whichincludednotjustcategorymembershipbutalsocontextofinsertion(Chomsky
1957,Chomsky1965). So,whilethephrasestructureruleforVPmightallowforop-
tionalNP,CPorotherkindsofcomplementstoV,thelexicalentryofanindividualverb
would ensurethat it couldonly be inserted if the ‘matching’phrase structure rewrite
rulehadbeenchosen.Atoyexampleisshownin(1).
(1) PhraseStructureRule: VP→V(NP/CP)
LexicalEntryforhit:V; NP
LexicalEntryfordeny:V: CP
LexicalEntryfordine:V:
Variabilityinaparticularverb’sinsertionpossibilitiescouldbecapturedinoneoftwo
ways: onecouldeitherlist two distinctlexicalentrieswithslightly differentsubcate-
gorizationframes(2i), or optionalitycouldbe builtin to the subcategorizationframe
ofasingleentryasin(2ii).
(2) (i)LexicalEntryforbelieve1: V; NP
LexicalEntryforbelieve2: V; CP
(ii)LexicalEntryforeat:V; (NP)
Builtintothissystemistheideathatadistinctionneedstobemadebetweenlexical
informationthatisrelevanttothesyntax,andthatwhichisnot.Thelexicalentryforeat
abovedoesnotexhaustwhatthespeakerknowswhentheyknowthatwordofEnglish.
A messy andsometimesconventional,sometimesidiosyncraticcollectionof concep-
tualinformationandassociationsgoesalongwitheachlexicalitemaswell. Someof
thisinformationisimplicatedinjudgmentsofinfelicity,asopposedtostraightupun-
grammaticality. For example, the verb eat requires as its SUBJECT an entity which
imbibes,orisatleastliving;aninanimateorabstractSUBJECT soundsnonsensicalat
worst,andpoetic(requiringmetaphoricinterpretation)atbest(3).
(3) ♯Happinessatetheapple.
Suchinformationisoftendiscussedundertheheadingof‘semanticselectionalrestric-
tions(s(emantic)-selection)’andnotincludedinthe formallexicalinformationabout
subcategorization for particular syntactic categories (c(ategory)-selection)(Chomsky
1965). Of course, the relationship between these types of information is potentially
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more complicated. In the case of argument selection, one possibility is that a lexi-
calverbhasasemanticselectionalrequirement,which,becauseof‘canonicalrealiza-
tion rules’ mapping from denotations to syntactic category, translates into particular
c-selectionalrequirements(seeGrimshaw1979,1981fortheideathatc-selectionand
s-selection are autonomous subsystems with ‘canonical’ mapping principles). This
raises the question of whether c-selection needs to be stated independently at all—
Pesetsky(1985)arguesthattheymightbemadetofollowfromindependentlyneeded
statementsaboutcaseassignment.However,morerecentsyntacticthinkingcastsdoubt
onthe ideaoftheGBstyle‘Case Filter’asa primitiveofgrammar,(rightly,Ithink,)
placing the burden back onto a basic notion of c-selection. There are two important
ideasnottolosesightofhere.Firstly,theideathatsomelexicalinformationisrelevant
forsyntactic behaviorandsome notremainsanimportanttruth, whichshouldnotbe
ignoredasmoredetailedsystemsofargumentclassificationareproposed.Specifically,
distinctionsin verb meaning must be encoded only in so far as they have systematic
effectsinthegrammar. Secondly,someformofsyntacticselectionseemstobeafact
oflife,andcannotandshouldnotbeignoredwhenspecifiyingthegrammar(Emonds
2000),hopefullyreducibletoselectionforsyntacticcategoryofcomplement(Svenon-
ius1992).
Toanimportantdegreeofapproximation,theearlysystemsofphrasestructurerule
andlexicalsubcategorizationframeworkedverywell,althoughtheyalreadyraisedthe
questionof howto decidewhenseparatelexicalitemswere appropriate,orwhen the
‘same’ item was being used in two differentways. When two distinct alternants are
available,asinthecaseofgive(V; NPNPandV; NPPP)asingleentrywith
optionality brackets does not suffice. If two lexical entries are given, how does one
representthefactthatthetwoentriesarerelated? Inthecaseofthedativealternation,
itwasproblematicthatthealternationseemedtobesystematictoaparticularclassof
transferpredicates(see Oehrle 1976for an importantearly study). Since the lexicon
wassupposedtobetherepositoryofidiosyncraticmemorizedinformation,listingeach
transfer verb and its alternants individually raised the obvious spectre of the Missed
Generalization.
Indeed, missed generalizations were to be the driving force behind much of the
early work on lexical argument structure: if thematic roles could be classified ab-
stractly,andifpatternscouldbediscernedacrossverbclasses,thenthatwasanobvious
advanceonmerelisting. Suchgeneralizationswerenoticedveryearlyinthegenerative
tradition (Gruber 1965, Fillmore 1968, Lakoff 1968, McCawley 1968) and attempts
were made to describe overarchingprinciplesthat accountedfor them. These gener-
alizations could be stated in terms of general transformations as in Fillmore (1968),
orintermsofafilterasinthecaseoftheworkofGruber(1965). Thepublicationof
Chomsky’s‘RemarksonNominalization’(Chomsky1970)convincedmanythatthere
wasanothersourceorlocusforstatinggeneralizations/rulesotherthanthroughtrans-
formations,andthetraditionofcapturingargumentstructureregularitiesintheLexicon
was born. Thus, alternationsthat were systematic could now be captured by rule, in
thiscase ‘LexicalRedundancyRules’ (Jackendoff1972,Jackendoff1975)sincethey
representedageneralpattern(apparentlyinternaltotheLexicon). AlthoughChomsky
himselfdidnotadvocatethismove,itwasanaturaloneforpeopletomake,giventhe
numberofothergeneralizationsthatneededtobecapturedinthedifferentrealizations
3
ofrelatedlexicalitems. IquotefromJackendoff(1975)here,tounderlinethepoint.
“Withouttransformationstorelatedecideanddecision,weneedtode-
velopsomeotherformalism. Chomskytakesthepositionthatdecideand
decisionconstitute a single lexicalentry,unmarkedforthe syntacticfea-
turethatdistinguishesverbsfromnouns. Thephonologicalformdecision
is inserted into base trees under the node N; decide is inserted under V.
Since Chomskygivesnoargumentsforthisparticularformulation,Ifeel
freetoadoptherethealternativetheorythatdecideanddecisionhavedis-
tinctbutrelatedlexicalentries. ” Jackendoff1975:640-641.
Thus,whileMarantz(1997)iscorrectinpointingoutthatChomsky’sactualposi-
tionin‘Remarks’mayhavebeenclosertothecurrentDistributedMorphology(DM)
idea of acategorial roots (see section 6.2), the fact remains that the attack on over-
powerfultransformationsprovokedmanylinguists to seek a systematic alternativein
termsofthelexicon,wherethenotionofselection/projectioncouldbemaintainedand
wheregeneralizationsofadifferentnaturecouldbestated(specifically,argumentstruc-
turegeneralizations). (WewillreturntoadiscussionoftheDMpositioninrelationto
lexicalism in the final section of this chapter.) In fact, Jackendoff’s solution for ex-
pressingthe“relationsbetweenlexicalentries”intermsof‘lexicalredundancyrules’
wasnotintendedtobe atransformationaldevice,butratherthe expressionofthede-
greeofredundancybetweenlexicalentriesthatwouldbeinputtoaneconomymetric
thatassessedtheoveralleconomyofthegrammarwhichcontainedthem.
Thedominanceoflexicaltheoriesinthedomainofargumentstructurethroughout
the seventies and eighties is thus largely the result of contingent factors in the way
thetheorydeveloped. Itisimportanttorealizethattheveryearliestwork(cf. Gruber
(1965)vs. Fillmore (1968))was dividedaboutthe place in the grammarwhere such
generalizationsshould be located. I think those questionshave resurfaced today, es-
sentially because they were never really resolved. The major portion of the chapter
however,willdealwithoutliningwhatweknowabouttheactualgeneralizationsthem-
selves. Sincemuchofthatworkiscouchedinalexicalistframework,weneedtofirst
examinethetoolsthatbecamecurrentintheearlystagesofthetheory.Asweproceed,
itwillbeimportanttokeepseparatethetoolsusedinaspecifictypeoftheory,fromthe
generalizationsthattheyaimtoexpress.
2.1 TheRiseandFallofThematicRolesandThematicHierarchies
An early and importantstrategy for enrichingthe data structures of the Lexicon was
theadditionofthematicrolelabels,whichweresupposedtorepresentnaturalclasses
ofparticipantwhichwererelevantforsyntacticpatterning. Oneofthemostimportant
syntactic generalizationsseemed to involvedthe choice of SUBJECT, but generaliza-
tionsaboutcasemarkingandchoiceof OBJECT vs. OBLIQUE wererecognizedearly
on as being relevant. Once thematic role labels are presentin the data structures for
individuallexicalitems,theycanbeinputtostatementsthatmapdirectlytothesyntax.
PossiblythefirstthematichierarchywasimplicitlyinvokedbyFillmore(1968)inthe
serviceofstatingaSUBJECTselectionprinciple:
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(4) If there is an A [= Agent], itbecomesthe SUBJECT; otherwise, if thereis an I
[= Instrument], it becomes the SUBJECT; otherwise, the SUBJECT is the O [=
Objective,i.e. Patient/Theme].(Fillmore1968pg33)
ThisessentiallyreducestoaSUBJECTselectionprinciplewhichtakesthehighestrole
onthefollowinghierarchy:
(5) Agent>Instrument>Patient/Theme
Thematichierarchieswereattractivetolinguistsbecausetheyweregeneralstructures
whichcouldbeappealedtointhestatementofanumberofdifferentsyntacticgeneral-
izations. However,thatappealisdependentontherebeingasinglesuchhierarchy,as
opposedtodifferentrankorderingsdependingonthephenomenonbeinginvestigated.
Unfortunately,the consensusnowseemsto be thatthissimplyis notthecase. Levin
and Rappaport Hovav (2005) list 16 distinct thematic role hierarchies, organized by
whereGoalandLocationareplacedrelativetothePatient/Themeroles,forexample.
Indeed,LevinandRappaportHovav(2005)giveaconvincingdeconstructionofthe
typesandusesofthematichierarchiesoverthe yearsinwhichtheyhadtheirheyday.
They show that the different thematic hierarchies across researchers arise because a
numberof differentfactors. First of all, there is often a difference in scope or gran-
ularity involved, directly related to the type of syntactic phenomenon that is being
accounted for. Thus, accounting for SUBJECT selection tends to provoke a different
setofrolesfromthetaskofaccountingfor OBJECT selectionorcase marking. Also,
researchers vary in whether they map the thematic hierarchy into syntactic relations
in a top-downor bottom-upfashion, with or withoutfixedpoints, or in whetherthey
believe that mapping to the syntactic representation is then input to further transfor-
mational rules or not. However, even after details of technical implementation are
accountedfor,itdoesnotappeartobethecasethatasinglehierarchyisrelevantforall
typesofgeneralizationsconcerningthemappingtosyntax. Rather,individualhierar-
chiesareoftensimplyconvenientnotationsusedtostateoneparticulargeneralization
inaparticulardomain,andarethestatementofapatternratherthananexplanationof
it. IreferthereadertoLevinandRappaportHovav(2005)formoredetailedexposition
andexamples.
Animportantdissentingvoicetothethematicroleandthematichierarchymethod
of expressing the mapping to syntax came from Dowty (1989), who argued that the
roles in use in the literature did not have clear definitions or entailments that were
testable in a way that was replicableacross researchers. In Dowty (1991), he argues
further that the thematic roles need to be decomposedand that the primitives are re-
allycertainentailmentswhichare‘prototypical’entailmentsofSUBJECTvs. OBJECT
respectively. ThechoiceofSUBJECTinDowty’stheoryderivesfromwhichargument
possessesmoreoftheprotopropertiesofSUBJECTthantheothers.Dowty(1991)’slist
ofproto-rolepropertiesisgivenbelow.
(6) Dowty’sProtoRoles(1991)
ContributingpropertiesfortheAgentProto-role
a. volition
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b. sentience(and/orperception)
c. causesevent
d. movement
e. referentexistsindependentofactionofverb
ContributingpropertiesforthePatientProto-role
a. changeofstate(includingcomingintobeing,goingoutofbeing)
b. incrementaltheme(i.e. determinantofaspect)
c. causallyaffectedbyevent
d. stationary(relativetomovementofProto-agent)
e. Referentmaynotexistindependentofactionofverb,ormaynotexistatall.
Dowty’sArgumentSelectionPrinciple(Dowty1991)
TheargumentofapredicatehavingthegreatestnumberofProto-agentproperties
entailedbythemeaningofthepredicatewill,allelsebeingequal,belexicalized
asthesubjectofthepredicate;theargumenthavingthegreatestnumberofProto-
patientpropertieswill,allelsebeingequal,belexicalizedasthedirectobjectof
thepredicate.
GeneraldissatisfactionwiththethematicroleapproachmadeDowty’ssystemofproto-
roles attractive to many linguists. The system was flexible, and even allowed for
crosslinguistic disagreementsin cases wherethe proto-rolecountwas either even, or
atleastambiguous.Moreover,theparticularentailmentpropertiesthatDowtyisolated
seemedtobe botheasy to verifytruthconditionally,aswellas haveageneralcogni-
tiveplausibilityasprimitives. Despitetheseadvantages,itisimportanttorealizethat
Dowty’s system is essentially a retreat from a generative systematic treatment of ar-
gumentstructurepatterns. Theprincipleofargumentselectiongivenabovecannotbe
seen asa factaboutthe synchroniccomputationalsystem (since plausibly,grammars
should not be able to ‘count’ (see Prince and Smolensky 1993) and are not actually
subject to internal variability in cases of ‘ties’). The Dowty principles above basi-
callygiveuptheideathatthegeneralizationsweseeshouldberepresentedinthecore
grammar—theprincipleshegivesmusthavethestatusofgeneralcognitivetendencies
which ultimately underlie how various concepts tend to get lexicalized (memorized)
in naturallanguage(asthe quotefromDowty’sargumentselectionprincipleactually
makesexplicit).
I will say no more about the proto-role approach in this chapter, merely noting
that its popularity is an important indicator of the failure of the thematic hierarchy
approaches, and that it remains an alternative type of strategy for those who believe
thatargumentstructuregeneralizationslieoutsideofthegrammarproper.1 Thelogical
conclusionof the Dowtyapproachtakes usbackto the methodof listing and memo-
rizingeachlexicalitemseparately,evenwhentheylookidenticalandexhibitargument
alternationsthatseem to be systematic. Thischapter, however,exploresthe opposite
view,thatargumentstructuregeneralizationstellussomethingrealaboutthewaythat
linguisticrepresentationsarestructured(whilestillconcedingthatthisisprobablyun-
1Accordingtothisview,theDowtylistlooksthewayitdoesbecauseofgeneralhumancognitivecon-
straintsonthementalrepresentationofevents,anotaprioriimplausibleposition.
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derwrittenbyourhumancognitivetendencies).
The conclusionofLevin andRappaportHovav(2005)is that “...it is impossible
toformulateathematichierarchywhichwillcaptureallgeneralizationsinvolvingthe
realizationofargumentsintermsoftheirsemanticroles”(pg183). However,theydo
arguethatsomeapparentthematichierarchyeffectsarisebecause“embeddingrelations
amongargumentsin an eventstructure are always respected in argumentrealization,
with more embedded arguments receiving less prominent syntactic realizations” (pg
183). Thus,thedominantlexicalistpositionandgeneralconsensusseemstobemov-
ing towards more structured representations of lexical meaning: instead of role lists
andanindependentstatementofranking,wefindeventstructuretemplates,orabstract
representationsof force dynamicalinteractionsthatexist in parallelto otherkindsof
conceptualinformation(LevinandRappaportHovav1995,Pustejovsky1995),orac-
tiontier(Jackendoff1990(Croft1998),whicharethenprojectedontothesyntax.
2.2 Conditions onLinking
In a lexicalist theory, the representation of lexical meaning must bear some relation
to the syntactic structures those lexical items appear in. In the early days of subcat-
egorization frames and an unstructured lexicon, this could simply be stated in terms
of matching, since the information in the subcategorization grid was taken from the
same vocabularyof symbolsand relations as the informationin the phrase structure.
Withtherise ofstructuredlexicalrepresentationsthatutilize semanticprimitivesthat
aredistinctfromsyntacticcategorylabelsandstructures,suchtheoriesneed‘mapping
principles’tocorrelatethetwotypesofrepresentations. Thus,thehistoryofargument
structure is closely tied to the history of ‘mappingprinciples’ of varioustypes, from
verygeneralandunderspecified,toextremelyspecific.
ThemostgeneraloftheseprinciplesistheTheProjectionPrinciple,whichmerely
saysthattheinformationencodedinthelexiconcannotbeignoredor‘lost’duringthe
courseofasyntacticderivation;thiswillincludeinformationaboutcategoryandthe-
maticrolesassignedintheclassicaltheory.TheThetaCriterionisspecifictothematic
roleinformationanditenforcesaone-to-onemappingbetweenlabelledargumentpo-
sitionsinthelexiconandsyntacticallyrepresentedarguments.
(7) TheProjectionPrinciple
Representationsateachsyntacticlevel(i.e.,LF,andD-andS-structure)arepro-
jectedfromthelexicon,inthattheyobservethesubcategorizationpropertiesof
lexicalitems.
Chomsky(1981),pg29
(8) TheThetaCriterion
Eachargumentbearsoneandonlyoneθ-role,andeachθ-roleisassignedtoone
andonlyoneargument.
Chomsky(1981),pg36
However, even here we find differences. As Levin and Rappaport Hovav (2005)
point out, mapping from thematic hierarchies can either work from the top down or
7
fromthebottomup,ordirectlyrelyoncertainsyntacticanchorsforelementsonthehi-
erarchy. Thus,inLexical-FunctionalGrammar(LFG),whichtakesgrammaticalfunc-
tions(SUBJECT,OBJECT,OBLIQUE)tobeprimitives,therulesdonotmatchuphierar-
chiessomuchasusedistinguishedpositionsonthehierarchyofthematicrolestomap
toindependentsyntacticprimitives(Bresnan2001)(seealsochapter6,thisvolume).
Anotherdifferencebetweentheoriesoflinkingisthequestionofwhethersyntactic
transformationscanoperateontheoutputofthelinkingrulesornot,tocreatefinalsyn-
tacticrelationshipsdifferentfromtheinitialones. Thisstateofaffairsiscommonplace
in Government and Binding (GB)-like theories and their descendants which map to
aninitialstructuralposition(D-structure),whileitisnotconsideredanoptioninLFG
wheremappingisdirectlytotheF-structure2 ofthesentence,andwheregrammatical
function does not get changed by syntactic rule. This leads to the classical conflict
betweenthe two theorieswith regardto statinga ‘rule’in thelexicalmodule, orasa
syntacticmovement/transformation(cf.Alsina1992vs. Baker1988).Iwillnotpursue
thistypeofdebatefurtherinthischaptersinceitseemstobearmoreonanargument
betweenLFGand GBthanonthe substantiveissue ofwhatthe beststatementof the
semanticfactorscorrelatingwithargumentstructuregeneralizationsare, andonwhat
constraintsbestexpressthealternationpossibilities.
Ingeneral,linkingtheoriestendtodivideonwhethertheyassumethatthemapping
tosyntaxis‘absolute’or‘relative’. Inabsolutesystems, aparticularthematicroleor
featurehasanabsolutesyntacticcorrelate(aparticularplaceinthephrasestructure,or
aparticularsyntacticfeature);inrelativesystems,themappingofaparticularthematic
roleorfeaturetothesyntaxdependsonwhatotherthematicrolesorfeaturesarealso
beingmappedforthatlexicalitem orconstruction. Pure hierarchymatchingsystems
areessentiallyrelativistic,butsincetheconsensusintheargumentstructureliterature
seems to be that no single hierarchy has enough generality to provide a principled
mapping theory for all the purposes required, I will say nothing further about them
here.
Variousabsolutemappingprincipleshavebeenproposedovertheyears,whichhave
beenveryinfluential.TheformalizationoftheintuitiongoesbacktoRelationalGram-
mar and its Universal Alignment Hypothesis (UAH) (Perlmutter and Postal 1984),
which states that there are universal principles of grammar which determine a nom-
inal’sinitialsyntacticrepresentationintherelationalstructure,fromitsmeaning. The
intuitionisexpressedmostfamouslyinitsGBversionasMarkBaker’sUniformityof
ThetaAssignmentHypothesis(UTAH),whichmakesexplicitreferencetoD-structure,
but leaves open the nature of the structural relationships (assumed here to be phrase
structuralposition)andthematicrelationships(oftenassumedtobethematicrolelabel,
althoughthisisnotstrictlynecessary)involved.
(9) TheUniformityofThetaAssignmentHypothesis(UTAH)
Identicalthematicrelationshipsbetweenitemsarerepresentedbyidenticalstruc-
turalrelationshipsbetweenthoseitemsatthelevelofD-structure. (fromBaker
1988:46)
2F-structureisthedatastructureofLFGthatrepresentsgrammaticalfunctioninformationsuchasSUB-
JECT and OBJECTseparately from constituent structure or order (see Bresnan 2001 and chapter 6, this
volume,fordetails).
8
Thisprinciplecanbeinterpretedinmanywaysdependingonthenumberandfine-
grainednessof the thematic rolesassumed. In a recentversionof the UTAH and the
roles that go along with it (Baker 1997), a very pared down set of abstract roles is
correlateddirectlyto particularsyntactic positionsat the bottomof the verbalphrase
structure.
(10) VP
Agent
V
Theme
V Goal/Path
The claim that there is a systematic mapping between structure and meaning is
clearly consistent with a number of different proposals about what that mapping is.
In other words it is not itself a theory of that mapping, but the statement of the as-
sumptionthatsucha mappingdoesindeedexist.3 Thus, itisconsistentwiththeories
such as Tenny’s Aspectual Interface Hypothesis (AIH) (discussed more fully in sec-
tion4), amongothers(Tenny1987,1994). Interestingly,UTAH-friendlytheoriesare
alsoapplicabletoarchitectureswhichdonotemploystructuredlexicalrepresentations,
sincethemappingbetweensemanticsandstructureisassumedinmoreconstructivist
theoriesaswell(e.g.Ramchand2008).
Inothercases,‘linking’principlesimposecertainarchitecturalassumptionsonthe
theory. In particular, the Projection Principle, while seemingly innocuous, requires
thatlexicalalternationsbeunderwritteneitherbyhighlyunderspecifiedlexicalitems,
or by items that have first undergonemodification by rule in the lexicon. Clearly, it
wasdesignedtodisallowasystemwheresyntacticrulescouldarbitrarilydestroylex-
ically presentinformation. However,such a system also disallowsa modelof partial
projectionofinformationtocapturecertainalternations(suchasthatproposedine.g.
Ramchand2008).Similarly,theThetaCriterionisdesignedtoworkwiththematicrole
labelsthatlabelparticipantsholistically,andnotformoreabstractfeaturedecomposi-
tions. Theone-to-onemappingthatitenforcesmakesitnecessarytopositcoreference
relationshipsasrulesinthelexiconif‘roles’aretobefusedundercertainconditions.4
Mostimportantly,theseprinciplesassumethatthelexicondoescontaininformationto
beprojected,anideaoftendeniedinrecentconstructivistapproaches(Marantz1997,
3However,theUTAHinparticularenshrinesthecorrelationbetweenformandmeaninginonedirection
only—thematicrelationshipsmapdeterministicallyontosyntax,butnotnecessarilyinthereversedirection
sothattherecanbeamanytoonerelationshipbetweenthematicinformationandstructuralposition. Itis
possibletogoevenfurther,withone-to-onemappingsbetweenphrasestructureandmeaningproposedby
e.g.HaleandKeyser(2000),amovethattendstobefavoredbytheconstructivists.
4Seeforexample,Reinhart(2002)’srolecoreferencerulesforlexicalized‘reflexives’suchasshaveor
bathe,ortheanalysisofcomplexverbalformswherethe‘affectedargument’orPATIENTofoneeventis
identified with the ‘causer’ or AGENTof an embedded event as in Alsina and Joshi(1993) for Marathi
causatives.
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HarleyandNoyer2000,Borer2005).WhileTheThetaCriterion(Hornstein1990)and
indeedthenotionofa generativelexiconhavecomeunderfire inrecentyears(Borer
2005,Ramchand2008),itisimportantto keepsightofthe factthatthesetwo condi-
tions together were designed to rule out generating such grossly offending forms as
thosein(11)below.
(11) (a)*Johnhit.
(b)*Maryelapsedthetime.
(c)*Johnatedinnerthefork.
Whilethischapterdoesnotwishtopresupposetheexistenceofastructuredlexical
database with database internal rules, any rethinkingof the grammaticalarchitecture
stillneedstodeliverthesebasicresults.
Thissectionhasattemptedtogivesomeoverviewofthetypesofmechanismsand
assumptionsinvolvedinthetreatmentofargumentstructurerepresentationoverthelast
thirtyyears. Itisnecessarytounderstandthesevariouspositionsinreadinganyofthe
vastandimportantliteratureonthistopic,whichhascontributedtoourknowledgeof
thedetailedempiricalgeneralizationsatstake.However,therewillbecertainstrandsof
researchthatIwillnotfollowuponindiscussingthedatainsubsequentsections.This
is because I believe that a certain consensushas been reached on a numberof major
points. Specifically,Iwillnotassumethatsimplerolelistsorthematichierarchiesare
adequatetothejobofexpressingthegeneralizationswesee. Iwillassumeratherthat
argumentrelationshaveaninherentstructureto them,andthatthisismanifestin the
syntactic representation. I will also not confine myself to the problem of SUBJECT
selection,butlookmoregenerallyatOBJECTsandPPargumentsaswell,touchingon
case,asanotherpossiblemorphologicalcorrelateofargumentstructuregeneralizations
inthesyntax.
2.3 Accounting forLexicalVariability
Nominal projections bear certain semantic relations and bear participant roles in an
eventuality described by a verb. The nature and structuring of those participants is
whatwehavebeenreferringtohereas‘argumentstructure’.Argumentstructure,how-
ever,oftenimpliesa rigid structuredrepresentationthatislexically associatedwith a
particular verb. In what follows, I will often use the more neutral terms ‘participant
relations’or‘eventparticipancy’torefertotherelationshipbetweenanominalentity
and the eventuality that it participates in. The central empirical concern of the ‘ar-
gument structure’ literature is to uncoverthe morphosyntacticpatterns that correlate
withtypesofeventparticipancy. Thisenterpriseisoftenembarkedoninconjunction
withtheseparate(andsometimesconfounded)architecturalquestionofwhataspeaker
knows when they know the limits and flexilbilities of a verb in their language— the
‘User’sManual’foreachparticularverb.Theexistenceofpervasivelexicalvariability
showsus that these are notat all the same question, and answeringthe first question
with a rich listed representation as a ‘lexical’ entry is not sufficient. The existence
ofsystematicregularitiesandrigiditiesinverbalmeaningontheotherhand,showsus
thatthestrategyofignoringthesecondquestionaltogetherasinmanyradicalconstruc-
tivistaccounts(Marantz1997,Harley1995,Borer2005),invokingconventionandreal
10