The Internal Structure of Arguments And its Role in Complex Predicate Formation

This paper investigates Italian complex predicates combining light verbswith deverbal nominalizations in -ata, where the nominalizationsselect distinct light verbs according to the number of arguments of their base.The arguments of the light verb are inherited from its non-light counterpartbut interpreted with respect to the Lexical Conceptual Structure (LCS) of itscomplement. On the basis of this and other observations, this work proposesan explicit decomposition of arguments into (i) argument-variables, encodingargument properties but isolated from LCS and therefore void of interpretation,and (ii) thematic indices, linking argument-variables to LCS and thusenabling their interpretation. The proposed decomposition provides adeeper understanding of the operations affecting argument structures incomplex predicates, recasting light verb formation, thematictransfer, and argument suppression, in terms of finer grained operationsexclusively targeting either argument-variables or thematic indices.

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