This chapter discusses argument structure alternations capitalizing on the Role and Reference Grammar (RRG) notions of logical structure, macrorole and privileged syntactic argument assignment, and linking. A distinction is drawn between lexical and syntactic processes. The lexical alternations (for example, causativization and anticausativization) are often limited in productivity and serve to enrich the lexicon. The syntactic alternations (for example, passivization and antipassivization) are characterized by mappings between the lexical and the syntactic levels, and may play an important role in referent tracking or topic continuity.

This chapter presents a sketch grammar of Amis, an Austronesian language spoken in Taiwan. The data are representative of the Central dialect of this language. The focus of the discussion is on phenomena related to its case marking and voice, such as applicative constructions and grammatical relations. An in-depth discussion of macrorole assignment with one-place predicates is included.

This chapter reviews and discusses issues involving the case theory in the generative framework of syntax with data from Chinese, a language without overt morphological case marking. Specifically, it addresses the interrelationship of abstract case, morphological case, and the thematic roles of NPs; the association between the distribution of NPs and case positions; and the possibility of overt vs. covert arguments and the finite tense. The data presented here highlight the variety of ways in which language facts can be described. The challenges to case theory arise not only from the morphological realization of cases on NPs, but also from the flexibility of the number of NPs that can be associated with a given verb, the flexibility of thematic roles associated with a verbal event, and the optionality of word order, as well as the possibility of overt subjects in non-finite clauses. Amid the advancement of cross-linguistic observations, Universal Grammar may eventually inform a holistic account of human languages, in which case theory is superseded by a more fine-grained mechanism for argument-thematic mapping, together with more careful consideration of information structure.

Multiple aspects of the external argument ArgE need better understanding. First, no principle of UG explains why ArgE must stay structurally outside any lexical verbal projection. This fact is argued to result from the USM requiring an isomorphic mapping between semantics and structure while UG itself cannot guarantee such a result via X'-theory. The solution is iconicity of independence, which matches ArgE’s conceptual “independent existence” (Dowty 1991) from an event with its structural separation from the projection of the event-denoting V. Second, the grammatical properties of ArgE, especially given the iconicity account, must be compared with those of oblique arguments, eventually leading to a theory of the morphology–syntax interface which allows a uniform account of several types of cross-linguistic fact. Third, regarding word order, moved constituents exhibit the earlier-iff-structurally-higher correlation while in situ constituents don’t, with ArgE typologically in both groups. This property, together with the unique word orders produced by linear iconicity in previous chapters, prompts the hypothesis that linearization results from computational cost and the 2nd law of thermodynamics, which further identifies a new locality phenomenon: the functional domain island.

This chapter considers the borderline between morphology and syntax and the ways in which morphology and syntax interact with each other. We begin with a look at the ways in which morphology can affect the valency or argument structure of sentences, considering passives and anti-passives, which decrease valency, and causatives and applicatives, which increase valency. We then go on to look at processes of noun incorporation and cliticization and at phrasal verbs, verbs with separable prefixes, and so-called phrasal compounds. The chapter concludes with alook at morphological versus syntactic (periphrastic) expression in English comparatives and superlatives.