Argument structure licensing and Englishhave

Abstract

This paper provides a unified syntactic account of the distribution of Englishhavein 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 thathaveis realized in the context of anapplicative head(Appl) and an event-introducer v, regardless of the type of v.Haveis spelled out in the causative when Appl merges under vCAUSE, and in the experiencer construction when Appl merges under vBE. This proposal is extended tohavein possessive constructions (e.g.John has a hat/a brother):haveis realized in the context of vBEand 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.