This chapter addresses the major syntactic (and partly semantic) topic of argument structure. Argument structure alternations have been central in the development of syntactic theory since Chomsky’s original transformational approach to passivization, and particularly since Fillmore’s work on ‘Case’ relations. In Pāṇinian grammar, the kāraka system provides a highly sophisticated model of argument structure, which has influenced developments in the modern Western tradition, and which also differs from modern argument structure approaches in interesting ways. The kāraka system is explained and illustrated, and compared and contrasted with modern approaches to argument alternations.

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 focuses on an illustrative phenomenon that has presented challenges for previous theories: non-nominative subjects. A summary of preceding literature is given, highlighting the relevant subjecthood properties of the Icelandic preverbal datives, as well as the subject-licensing syntactic positions in that language. A contrast is then drawn with similar dative arguments in German, concluding that the German obliques do not behave as subjects with respect to control properties, and do not occupy Spec,TP like the Icelandic datives. Before investigating the subjecthood of the Faroese datives, a detailed overview of what is currently known of Faroese clause structure is presented to establish the evidence for argument-licensing positions in the language. The standard subjecthood tests are applied to the Faroese dative-experiencer predicates, which demonstrate that the Faroese datives behave very similarly to those in Icelandic with respect to subjecthood properties. Given that the dative arguments in such sentences appear to be true subjects, and therefore the subject licensing position of Spec,TP seems to be the same in both Faroese and Icelandic, the differences in object case and number agreement with a plural object remain to be explained. This is explored in Chapters 3–7.

Chapter 7 lays out new data from both Faroese and Icelandic regarding triadic verbs, in particular the passive of ‘give’ and other three-place predicates. The theoretical apparatus presented in Chapter 6 is brought to bear on ditransitives and shown to predict the correct case frames and word orders in Icelandic and Faroese. First, an outline is given of double-object verbs in Faroese, noting that the evidence in some of the preceding literature is equivocal as to the acceptability of passive with ‘give’ and other triadic verbs. Data from a Faroese survey are discussed, the result being that no sentence with passive of ‘give’ was broadly accepted. Faroese evidence is discussed regarding the position of the theme and goal arguments in the active. Further data on the ‘give’ passive in Icelandic are presented; consistently with previous work, these Icelandic speakers have the option of either Goal-V-Theme or Theme-V-Goal orders in the passive. A Faroese survey on passives of ditransitives other than ‘give’ shows that the lexical semantics of a given verb interact with word order, such that if passive is judged acceptable, its mean acceptability is higher for the Theme-V-Goal order than for Goal-V-Theme.

Chapter 4 of Discourse Syntax (Variation in the Middle) introduces students to syntactic patterns that lead to sentences with non-canonical subjects or variation in the way the verb’s arguments are realized, including the object position. After discussing principles of canonical argument realization, including facts from language acquisition and insights from psycholinguistics, the chapter discusses the passive construction, including in preposition stranding contexts, and the verb-particle construction (also known as “phrasal verbs”), in the context of establishing topics, arranging given and new information, and shifting complex material to the end of the sentence (Principle of End-Weight). Woven into these explanations are data from current research in the text-linguistic and variationist approach and attestations from freely available corpora.

Current studies of semantic word formation of Chinese compounds aim to work out collocational patterns and semantic patterns. In addition to investigating the surface semantic relations among the composing morphemes of compound words, researchers adopt the methods of semantic-syntactic analyses of sentences and study the predicative relation among the composing morphemes. Rather than introducing argument structure, it might be better to make use of qualia structure to analyze the semantic structure of nominal compounds.

The term ‘alignment’ is used in the typological literature to characterize the morphosyntactic behaviour of arguments and their relationship to the predicate. The term usually refers to case, agreement, and word order. Within the Romance family, Latin and its descendants are considered to display basic nominative-accusative alignment. However, Latin also has a split intransitive subject alignment in certain paradigms of the verbal system. This split alignment continues in a variety of guises into later Romance varieties. In this chapter, we discuss these phenomena in some detail, highlighting microvariation within the Romance family and discussing their importance for our broader understanding of alignment. We focus on the diachrony of alignment, as a backdrop for the discussion of the synchronic situation in Romance languages. We discuss auxiliary selection and the alignment of past participle agreement, charting both frequent and rare splits. Subsequently, we focus on alignment in SE-passives and word order in Romance. Finally, we briefly discuss two other potentially relevant phenomena: INDE-cliticization and absolute participles/participial adjectives. As we shall see, in many of these cases, the Romance language family displays a remarkable array of alignment patterns which raise interesting challenges for theories of split-intransitivity and alignment more generally.

In this chapter, we discuss three classes of phenomena that are captured by the terms dependency and licensing, in clauses and nominal expressions: (i) the structural relation between a lexical head (e.g., V, N, A) and the functional structure projected by it such as the relation between a verb and an auxiliary or between a noun and a determiner; (ii) the selectional relation between a lexical head and the constituents that are combined with it to satisfy its argument structure, as in the case of the verb and the direct object; and (iii) the structural relation created by two different constituents that share the same referential index. In the third case, we observe two major types: a constituent is displaced, as in the case of the subject of a passive clause or a wh-constituent; or two constituents share the same referent but have different functions in the clause (or in different clauses), as is the case of pronouns and their antecedents. The dependencies dealt with in the first two cases are ‘local’, while the others can be long distance. Most of the analyses of the dependency phenomena relate the relative richness in inflexional morphology to variation in word order, argument marking, agreement, and the realization of pronominal reference.

This chapter provides a critical survey of some of the most significant phenomena that show how the study of Romance languages can make a strong contribution to our current theoretical understanding of the principles and empirical generalizations relevant to argument structure and its realization. After defining the notion of argument structure, two different current theoretical approaches to the lexicon–syntax interface are briefly presented: the projectionist one, which is typically adopted in lexicalist frameworks, and the constructivist/neo-constructionist one, which is assumed in non-lexicalist frameworks. The selection of empirical phenomena made in this chapter includes a discussion of the well-known distinction among intransitive verbal predicates (unaccusatives vs unergatives) in the context of Romance linguistics, a review of the crucial role of the Romance clitic se in argument structure and argument realization, a survey of some relevant explorations of events of transferal based on the grammar of dative clitics as well as other aspects of dative-marked arguments in Romance languages, and, finally, a discussion of the prominent place that these languages occupy in the huge literature on Talmy’s lexicalization patterns together with an overview of several refinements made to his initial typology of motion events.

In this chapter, I discuss the relationship between syntactic knowledge and sentence production, surveying previous studies on sentence production as they relate to syntactic theories. I examine representational assumptions that are widely held in prominent models of sentence production and empirical evidence for or against such assumptions, including evidence from speech errors, syntactic priming, and elicited production of complex sentences. I also discuss how syntactic theories and theories of speaking may (or may not) inform each other, focusing on studies that are relevant to the theories of argument structure, ellipsis, and long-distance dependencies. How production methods relate to acceptability judgment and theories of syntax more generally is also discussed.

In this chapter, we show that the well-formedness of each phrase depends on its internal and external syntax. The pivotal daughter element is the head, which determines what expressions may accompany it as its syntactic sisters. We observe that a grammar with simple phrase-structure rules raises two important issues: endocentricity (headedness) of a phrase and redundancies in the lexicon. To resolve these two issues, generative grammar has introduced X’ rules, including three key combinatorial rules: head-complement(s), head-specifier, and head-modifier. These rules ensure that each phrase is a projection of a head expression, while recognizing the existence of intermediate phrases (X’ phrases). X’ syntax captures the similarities between NPs and Ss by treating these phrase types in a uniform way. The grammar we adopt in this book (SBCG) follows this direction by using a fine-grained feature system to describe the syntactic and semantic properties of both simple and complex signs. This chapter introduces the basic feature system that we will use in describing the English language. We also examine the patterns of semantic-role expression called argument-structure patterns.

The status of the Germanic verbal particles and particle verbs display a number of intriguing characteristics, and they have therefore been extensively investigated in the literature on morphology, syntax, and semantics. The particles share much in common across the Germanic languages, yet they also differ in subtle ways both within and across languages. This chapter draws attention to those similarities and differences, and discusses why it has proven difficult to state a unified definition for particles. Special attention is given to several unsettled debates about the status, structure, and meaning of particles. Finally, the chapter draws attention to the interaction between particles and two related but distinct constructions: resultatives and directed motion constructions.