Argument structure licensing and English have
2011; Cambridge University Press; Volume: 48; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1017/s0022226711000168
ISSN1469-7742
Autores Tópico(s)Linguistics and Discourse Analysis
ResumoThis paper provides a unified syntactic account of the distribution of English have in causative constructions (e.g. John had Mary read a book ) and experiencer constructions (e.g. John had the student walk out of his classroom ). It is argued that have is realized in the context of an applicative head (Appl) and an event-introducer v, regardless of the type of v. Have is spelled out in the causative when Appl merges under v CAUSE , and in the experiencer construction when Appl merges under v BE . This proposal is extended to have in possessive constructions (e.g. John has a hat / a brother ): have is realized in the context of v BE and Appl. The proposed account provides empirical evidence for expanding the distribution of Appl: (i) a causative can take ApplP as a complement, which was absent in Pylkkänen's (2008) typological classification, and (ii) Appl can merge above Voice, contrary to Pylkkänen's analysis in which Appl is argued to always merge below VoiceP, never above. Moreover, the proposed account supports the theoretical claim that argument structure is licensed by functional syntactic structure; in particular, it shows that the relevant functional heads are not aspectual heads, but Appl and v.
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