Abstract
This paper investigates the patterns regarding the (un)availability of by-phrases and agent-oriented modification in adjectival passives in Spanish. Departing from the observation that adjectival participles derived from change-of-state verbs ban agent-oriented modification but those derived from stative causative verbs allow it, I put forth a novel theoretical account that derives the restrictions solely from the Aktionsart of the underlying verbal predicate, syntactically modelled and independently motivated. I extend my proposal to German and Hebrew, which display a similar behavior, and propose a parametric account for languages like Greek that freely allow by-phrases and agent-oriented modification regardless of the Aktionsart of the underlying verbal predicate.
Highlights
Introduction to the problemThe object of study of this paper is to determine the argument structure of adjectival passives ( APass) and its relationship to Aktionsart
Gehrke (2011,2012b,2015), focusing on APass derived from CoS verbs in German, notices that by-phrases and agent-oriented modifiers in general are very restricted, just like we have seen for Spanish
This paper has argued that the asymmetries in by-phrases and agentoriented modification in Spanish APass have the aspectual structure of the articulated VP as their source
Summary
In Ramchand’s system, the aspectual types of verbs are derived depending on which of these projections are present in the structure. A pseudo-incorporation account.16 Gehrke (2011,2012b,2015), focusing on APass derived from CoS verbs in German, notices that by-phrases and agent-oriented modifiers in general are very restricted, just like we have seen for Spanish. I conclude that by-phrases and agent-oriented modifiers in APass derived from CoS verbs in Spanish are not licensed by initP, or any externalargument introducing projection for that matter. What I strongly commit to in this paper is that this is the right route to follow, i.e. APass derived from CoS verbs do not project the phrase that introduces the external argument, and so the restricted instances where we do find by-phrases and agentive modifiers must be explained by different means I point out this account’s shortcomings, which I believe stem from ignoring the role of Aktionsart in APass, and suggest an alternative
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