Decomposition of activity verbal event and implication on their combinatory syntax

Abstract

This paper aims to give account of the grammatical behavior of past participle and gerund when these non-finite verb forms appear with activity verbs in the main predicate. To this end, I adopt the constructivist perspective assuming that morphosyntax and semantics correlate with each other in such a way that the first module determines the systematicity of lexical meaning. Concretely, the notion of event, conventionally associated to the properties of lexical items such as verbs, is split into different functional categories of subeventive nature. I argue on the basis of this assumption that past participle joins the constructions with activity verbs as complement, while gerund is adjunct, which hinges on the event structure of the aforementioned verbs.