One can think of Argument Movement as a function from a parse that satis-fies the Projection Principle and Theta Criterion to a parse that satissatis-fies the Case Filter. θ-roles are determined by lexical items and the Xs they project, and where Case is assigned is also controlled by the these lexical items. Lexical items, and verbs in particular, play a big role in setting up the environments in which Argument movement is called upon. The conditions on Argument movement place a cap, then, on the kinds of situations that verbs can create.
They won’t allow verbs to exist which create conflicts which Argument move-ment can’t fix.
Verbs set up these situations by influencing where theθ-marked and Case marked positions for an argument are. Thus, for example, we have seen that
there are verbs which assign one externalθ-role, and verbs which assign an ex-ternal and an inex-ternalθ-role and Accusative Case. These are sometimes called intransitive and transitive verbs, respectively; examples are in (192).
(192) a. Sally slept. (intransitive)
b. Sally likes kiwis. (transitive)
A special kind of transitive verb are exemplified by believe, consider and make, which assign their Accusative Case to something different than the argument they assign an internalθ-role to. As we’ve seen, these verbs can take a “clausal”
complement — sometimes these are “small clauses” — and assign their Ac-cusative Case to an NP within this clause.
(193) a. She believes [IPhim to be unhappy ].
b. She considers [APhim happy ].
c. She made [VPhim dance ].
We have also seen verbs that have no externalθ-role but do have an internal θ-role. One of these we have seen in situations such as:
(194) Sally appears [IPto like kiwis ].
Sally seems [APhappy ].
And others we have seen formed by the process of passivization:
(195) a. Sally was considered [APunhappy ].
b. Sally was considered .
There is evidence that some verbs which might otherwise look like intransi-tive verbs fall into this last class too. For instance, when appear c-selects not a clause, as it does in (194), but an NP, this NP surfaces in the nominative Case marked subject position, as shown in (196).
(196) A ghost appeared.
Burzio (1986), who produces the first systematic arguments on behalf of these two classes of single argument verbs, uses the terms unergative and ergative to distinguish them. Others, notably David Perlmutter who is the co-discoverer of this distinction,15have used the term unaccusative for what Burzio calls erga-tive verbs. Let’s use the term intransierga-tive as a label for either type of single-argument verb, with these two sub-classifications.
15 See Perlmutter (1978)
Argument Movement and a typology of verbs
(197) Intransitivesa. A ghost should sleep. (unergative)
b. A ghost should appear. (ergative, aka unaccusative) There are a wide assortment of syntactic phenomena that are sensitive to the distinction between these two sorts of intransitive verbs. We will encounter a few of them in the lectures that follow. In English, one of the phenomena that confirms the picture that there are intransitives that have a single internal argument as well as those that have a single external argument comes from the adjective formation process we briefly discussed in the previous chapter. Recall that this rule creates from a verb an adjective whose externalθ-role is the same as that assigned by the verb to its “direct” object. This process, then, should only be able to apply to verbs that have a direct objectθ-role, and indeed it is blocked for a large range of intransitive verbs as a consequence.
(198) a. * the danced man b. * the ran dog c. * the slept woman d. * the cried child
But there are a small class of intransitives which are able to be adjectives by this process, and these seem to be just the ergative or unaccusatives.
(199) a. the fallen leaves
b. the recently arrived package
In other languages, there is a wider assortment of phenomena that appear to be sensitive to the unaccusative/unergative distinction in intransitives.
Let’s consider, then, the space of verb types that we might expect to find and compare that to what we have found so far.
(200)
θ-roles Accusative Case No Accusative Case External, no internal ?? unergatives (sleep) No external, internal ?? ergatives (appear) external and internal transitives (like) ??
no external, no internal ?? ??
If assigning an external θ-role, an internal θ-role and assigning Accusative Case are independent properties that verbs have, then this table expresses all the possible ways in which we might expect these properties to combine. As
can be seen, there are quite a number of verb types that we haven’t yet seen, but which we should expect to exist.
Are there verbs yet to be discovered that fill these various cells? In some cases, the properties combined make for verbs that are rather difficult to dis-cover. Consider, for instance, a verb that assigns an external θ-role and Ac-cusative Case, but assigns no internalθ-role (a verb that would fit in the cell in the top row, first column). It will be very difficult to discover verbs of this sort, even if they should exist, because without a complement there will be nothing to bear the Accusative Case that such a verb would assign. The only way to see such a verb would be in cases where we might find a non-complement to which, or into which, Accusative Case could be assigned. One candidate, perhaps, for this situation are cases such as (201).16
(201) Jill laughed herself silly.
It is likely that the small clause, herself silly, is not a complement to laugh; it does not, in any case, refer to something that is involved in the event, or action, that laugh denotes. If the Accusative Case on herself comes from laugh — and where else could it come from? — then laugh is a verb of the sort we are in search of.
It should be noted that this analysis of (201) is at odds with some of the rest of the grammar we have developed. If herself silly is notθ-marked by laugh, then the Projection Principle is going to require it to be a sister to the V that laugh projects, as indicated in (202).
16 My thanks to Angelika Kratzer for suggesting that I use the adjective formation rule as a diag-nostic for unaccusatives, and for offering this construction as an example of this class of verb.
See Carrier and Randall (1992) and Kratzer (2005) for some discussion of this construction.
Argument Movement and a typology of verbs
(202) IP
NP
Jill
I
I
past
VP
V
V
V
laugh
AP
herself silly
But in this configuration, laugh will not c-command herself, and this is a re-quirement on Accusative Case assignment. Indeed, if the c-command require-ment on Case assignrequire-ment is correct and the Projection Principle’s placerequire-ment of complements is too, then these will conspire to prevent verbs of the sort we are searching from ever being found. If laugh genuinely is such a verb, then these parts of our grammar will need adjustment. This is work for the future.
Consider now verbs that assign neither an external nor an internalθ-role:
the class of verbs that would fill the cells of the bottom row in (200). Do these verbs exist? A candidate are verbs such as rain.
(203) It rains.
If the it in this example is not an argument, then here is a verb that assigns no θ-role.
What of the other two categories of missing verb? Are there verbs which support no external θ-role, but do assign an internal θ-role and Accusative Case? And are there verbs that assign both external and internal θ-roles, but no Accusative Case? To date, there are no verbs with these properties that have been discovered in English. At present, then, we can update the table in (200) to (204).
(204)
θ-roles Accusative Case No Accusative Case External, no internal laugh? unergatives (sleep) No external, internal not found ergatives (appear) external and internal transitives (like) not found
Burzio discovered the two gaps in this paradigm where there appear to be no verbs, and formulated generalizations which describe these absences.
(205) Burzio’s Generalization
a. If a verb assigns accusative Case, then it assigns an external θ -role.
b. If a verb assigns an externalθ-role (and an internalθ-role?), then it assigns accusative Case.
Why haven’t we found verbs like these? Burzio’s generalizations might reflect a relationship between Accusative Case and θ-role assignment for which we should find a source.
The second of these generalizations might be derivable from the condi-tions we have seen on Argument movement. To see this, consider the syntactic frames that our theory would let this verb be inserted into. One of these is (206).
(206) [IP should [VP Smith V Jones ]].
If V assigns these twoθ-roles, but no Case to Jones, then there is no way both of these NPs are going to be able to satisfy the Case Filter. There are more NP arguments than there are Cases. So, if such a verb is to survive, the only environment it will be able to appear in are sentences which have two Case marked positions. These two positions will both have to be Specifiers, because these are the only positions reachable by Argument movement. Thus, we’re looking for contexts like:
(207) [IP– should V1[XP – [VP Smith V2Jones]], where both “–” positions are Case marked.
Now the first part of Burzio’s Generalization tells us that V1 cannot assign Ac-cusative Case. If it did, then it would also assign an externalθ-role, and that’s going to bring the count of things that need Case to one more than there are Case marked positions. As a consequence, the Case marked position inside XP is going to also have to get its Case from some place other than V1. So far, the only ways we have seen for this to be done are if XP is in a CP:
(208) [IP – should V1[CP for [IP – to [VP Smith V2Jones ]]]].
[IP – should V1 [CP that [IP – I0[VP Smith V2Jones ]]]]
[IP – should V1 [CP e [IP – to [VP PRO V2Jones ]]]]
Argument Movement and a typology of verbs
The only place a verb of this sort could find a grammatical outcome is whenit is embedded under a verb that does not assign an external θ-role. That is arguably too narrow a niche for such a verb to become salient enough to be ac-quired. Moreover, we will see in a later chapter that there is some evidence for a constraint on Argument movement that prevents one argument from moving past another c-commanding argument. If such a constraint does exist, it would prevent Jones from reaching either of the Case-marked positions in (208). Con-sequently, even this one environment for such a verb would be removed.
For this reason, the usual conclusion is that the second of Burzio’s general-izations derives from constraints on Argument movement in concert with the Case filter. What remains is (209).
(209) Burzio’s Generalization
If a verb assigns accusative Case, then it assigns an externalθ-role.
If Burzio’s Generalization cannot be derived from constraints on the syntactic form that such verbs would have to live in, then it suggests that the assignment of Case andθ-roles is not independent in the way that we presently think it is.
We will need to return to this issue.
But before we do that, let’s turn to some of the other matters we left un-finished in the preceding chapter. In this chapter we’ve managed to clarifying enough of the forces that seem responsible for giving arguments their syntac-tic positions to tie up many of those loose ends. We now know what lies in the Specifier positions of many phrases and, at the same time, we have an idea about where subjectθ-roles are assigned. We have developed an account of the conditions that give a linear order to complements which is based on Case as-signment, and we’ve coupled this with a theory that allows arguments to be moved. This movement theory claims that one movement rule — Heavy NP Shift — is partly responsible for giving complements their post-verbal posi-tion, and another movement rule — Argument movement — is responsible for given NPs their S-structure position when they are notθ-marked in Case-marked positions. Along the way, we’ve discovered evidence for the existence of a silent argument NP, and this has generated some additional open ques-tions. We’ve answered, then, all of the questions we set out at the beginning of this chapter to answer, except for one. We have left the question of how the in-flectional morphology that our grammar places in I0manages to get expressed as part of a verb that follows, rather than as a morpheme in the position our rules place it. Before we return to the questions we’ve opened in this chapter — questions about how to control the distribution and interpretation of PRO, and
the connection betweenθ-role assignment and Case that Burzio’s Generaliza-tion seems to point to — let’s clear up this matter about I0. Surprisingly, what we learn about the expression of inflectional morphology in I0lends a hand to these other questions.
4
Verb Placement and Features
One problem with our attempt to characterize the grammatical English sen-tences has to do with the fact that the heads of sensen-tences are often not words.
Many finite clauses are headed by bound morphology, as in (1).
(1) IP
NP
she
I
I
-s
VP
V
V
enjoy
NP
chocolate
We reached this conclusion because it is morphology of this sort — agree-ment/tense morphology — that is in the one-to-one relation with the family of strings that we call IP. What we need to understand is how it is that this bound morpheme manages to find itself expressed on the verb that follows.
There is some evidence that in certain cases of this sort, the verb moves to the position our rules put the inflectional morphology. The rule responsible is, therefore, sometimes called Verb Movement. Its classic description is found
in Chomsky (1957) and Emonds (1976), and it is this process that is examined in our reading: Pollock (1989).