Reporter: Tsai, YuYing

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Section 4, 5, and 6

• Reporter Tsai, YuYing
• 0941065
• Instructor Dr. Wu

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Section 4.Which argument of a transitive verb is
the result XP predicated of?

• the casual chain
• Talmy sets out a family of "force-dynamic"
  relations, relations which describe the
  interactions between two event participants with
  respect to force.

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• Croft (199053,1991173,269) proposed the
  force recipient in a transitive-based
  resultatives have some properties of the result
  XP predicated of it.
• 1. a simple event is a segment of the casual
  network.
• 2. simple events are nonbranching casual chains
• 3. a simple event involves transmission of force
• 4. transmission of force is asymmetric, with
  distinct participants as initiator and
  endpoint...

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• Tracy wipes the table clean.
• i) the first with "clean" predicated of the
  object
• Causal chain for "Tracy wipes the table
  clean."
• ACT ON CHANGE
• Tracy --------gt table --------gttable

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• ii) the second with "clean" predicated of the
  subject

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• A transitive-based resultative whose postverbal
  NP is not categorized by the verb.
• ex They drank the pub dry.
• Causal chain for "They drank the pub dry."
• ACT ON CHANGE
• they --------gt pub --------gtpub
• We proposed that the transmission of force to
  an unspecified object is not represented in the
  casul chain. Therefore, no branching casual chain
  is involved in "They drank the pub dry."

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• Connexion The second member in a lexical
  SFsemantic form conjunction an event with
  more than one subevent specifies inferences
  about the first member.
• In brief, the force recipient approach
  receives support from the observation that verbs
  whose objects are incremental themes, but not
  force recipient (e.g., memorize, study, read,
  sing) cannot appear with object-predicated result
  XPs.

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Section 5. Verb distribution in nonsubcategorized
NP resultatives

• Levin Rappaport Hovav(199590-8) propose
  there are two semantic subclasses of verbs
• interally and externally caused verbs.

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• Interally caused verbs describe eventualities
• that are conceptualized as arising from inherent
• properties of the verb's argument.
• ---gt laugh, play, speak, walk, buzz, glow...
• bloom, rot, and deteriorate...
• ---gt a single event structure

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• Externally caused verbs describe eventualities
• conceptualized as being brought about by an
• external cause with immediate control over the
• eventuality.
• ---gt break, close, thicken
• ---gt a complex, causative event structure

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Section 6. Conclusion

• Why does DOR account for most of the
  resultative data? 3 reasons.
• 1) The causative event structure assocaited with
  resultatives describing events that are not
  necessarily temporally dependent requires that
  two arguments be realized in the syntax,
  resulting in the introduction of a reflexive when
  the two subeventsshare an argument.

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• 2) Most transitive verbs describe events which
  involve the transmission of force and thus can
  only be found in subcategorized NP resultative
  constructions with object-predicated result XPs.

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• 3) These distributional facts concerning the NPs
  that result XPs are predicated of have
  constituted the strongest evidence for positing
  distinct syntactic classes of unaccusative and
  unergative verbs in English, a language that
  lacks the explicit morphosyntactic indicators of
  unaccusativity found in some Romance and Germanic
  languages