Cause and the structure of verbs

Lexical Decomposition Grammar is proposed as a new framework to account for argument structure and argument structure alternations. It is based on Semantic Form (SF), a grammatical level at which complex verbs are minimally decomposed into more basic predicates. L-command relations in SF constrain the possible structural arguments. Argument linking follows from the hierarchy of 0-roles that results from λ-abstraction (possibly augmented by lexical features). The article discusses the role of cause and become in the decomposition of verbs, and it shows that causatives and resultatives constitute two fundamentally different options for expressing causal relationships in verbs, both already attested in simple verbs.

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