CatWPL 8 001-137 29/5/2001 17:29 Página 71

CatWPL 8, 2000 71-95

Why Can’t We Wipe the Slate Clean?

A Lexical-Syntactic Approach to Resultative
Constructions*
Jaume Mateu Fontanals
Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. Departament de Filologia Catalana
08193 Bellaterra (Barcelona). Spain
[email protected]

Received: October 10th 2000

Accepted: November 2nd 2000

Abstract

This paper provides a lexical-syntactic account (Hale & Keyser (1993, 1999)) of why Romance
languages do not have resultative sentences like John hammered the metal flat or the dog barked
the chickens awake. It is argued that there is no principled way to account for this «gap» in terms
of semantic and/or aspectual operations available in English but not in Romance. Rather, it is
shown that the parametric issue involved in the resultative construction must be related to one
empirical fact: the morphological properties associated with the lexical-syntactic element corre-
sponding to the directional relation are not the same in English as in Romance. It is claimed that
the parameterization of Talmy’s (1985) ‘conflation processes’, of which the resultative con-
struction is not but a particular instantiation, can be given explanatory power only when they are
translated into lexical-syntactic terms. It is argued that the relevant ‘lexical subordination process’
involved in resultative constructions is carried out by means of a syntactic operation rather than
a semantic one. This operation is shown to be possible in English because of its ‘satellite-framed’
nature (Talmy (1991)). By contrast, the ‘verb-framed’ nature of Romance languages prevents
them from carrying out such an operation.
On the other hand, a crucial distinction between true/non-adverbial resultatives (e.g., John
hammered the metal flat) vs. false/adverbial resultatives (e.g., John cut the meat thin) must be
drawn. Both English and Romance have false/adverbial resultatives, but only English has true/non-
adverbial resultatives. Parametric variation in the lexical-syntactic domain appears to be only rel-
evant to true resultatives.
Key words: resultative constructions, argument structure, lexical syntax, conflation processes.

* A previous version of this paper was presented at the 1998 Going Romance / Workshop on Using
and Acquiring the Lexicon (December 12, 1998, OTS, Universiteit Utrecht). Parts of this paper
were also presented at the VIII Colloquium on Generative Grammar (April 22, 1998, Palmela,
Portugal). I am grateful to the audiences for their comments and suggestions. Special thanks go
to Violeta Demonte, Anna Maria Di Sciullo, and Hans Kamp for their very interesting observa-
tions. I am also indebted to Gretel De Cuyper, Carme Picallo, Montserrat Pascual, Maria Teresa
Ynglès, and specially Laia Amadas and Gemma Rigau for helpful discussion. Finally, I would like
to thank two anonymous reviewers for helping me clarify my proposal. Needless to say, all possi-
ble errors are my own. This research has been made possible through projects funded by the Spanish
Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia (PB96-1199-C04-02), and the Generalitat de Catalunya
(1999SGR00113).
CatWPL 8 001-137 29/5/2001 17:29 Página 72

72 CatWPL 8, 2000 Jaume Mateu Fontanals

Resum. Why Can’t We Wipe the Slate Clean? Una anàlisi lexicosintàctica de les construccions
resultatives

En aquest article proposem una explicació lexicosintàctica (Hale i Keyser (1993, 1999)) de per què
les llengües romàniques no tenen construccions resultatives complexes del tipus John hammered
the metal flat (lit. ‘En Joan va martellejar el metall pla’) o The dog barked the chickens awake
(lit. ‘El gos va bordar els pollastres desperts’). Es defensa que aquesta variació entre l’anglès i
les llengües romàniques té a veure amb les diferents propietats morfològiques que aquestes
llengües assignen a l’element lexicosintàctic que expressa ‘direccionalitat’ o ‘trajecte’. Proposem
que es pot donar poder explicatiu a la parametrització dels processos de fusió de Talmy (1985),
dels que la construcció resultativa no n’és més que un exemple, només si aquests s’analitzen en
termes lexicosintàctics. Es defensa que el ‘procés de subordinació lèxica’ implicat en les con-
struccions resultatives complexes és una operació sintàctica més que no pas semàntica. Aquesta
operació és possible en anglès pel seu tipus d’‘emmarcament per satèl·lit’ [satellite-frame] (Talmy
(1991)). Per contra, el tipus d’‘emmarcament en el verb’ [verb-frame] de les llengües romàniques
és incompatible amb l’aplicació d’aquesta operació.
Per altra banda, cal distingir les veritables construccions resultatives (e.g., John hammered the
metal flat) de les que tenen una interpretació «adverbial» (e.g., John cut the meat thin). Tant l’an-
glès com les llengües romàniques tenen aquestes segones construccions, però només l’anglès en
té de les primeres. Per tant, la variació paramètrica en el domini lexicosintàctic només és rellevant
pel que fa a les primeres, i.e., les construccions resultatives complexes.
Paraules clau: construccions resultatives, estructura argumental, sintaxi lèxica, processos de
fusió.

Table of Contents
1. Introduction 4. Resultative Constructions
2. Semanticocentric Approaches and Parametric Variations:
to the Resultative Construction A Lexical-Syntactic Approach
3. The Syntax of Argument Structure 5. Concluding Remarks
References

1. Introduction
The main goal of this paper is to provide a lexical-syntactic explanation of the para-
metric variation involved in so-called «resultative constructions», which are exem-
plified in (1)-(3).1

(1) Transitive resultatives

a. The waiter wiped the dishes dry.
b. John hammered the metal flat.
c. John pushed the door open.

1. We follow Carrier & Randall (1992) in our preliminary classification of resultatives in (1-3).
CatWPL 8 001-137 29/5/2001 17:29 Página 73

A Lexical-Syntactic Approach to Resultative Constructions CatWPL 8, 2000 73

(2) Unergative resultatives

a. The dog barked the chickens awake.
b. The sopranos sang us sleepy.
c. Beth shouted herself hoarse.
(3) Unaccusative resultatives
a. The river froze solid.
b. The toast burned black.
c. The gate swung shut.

In particular, we will try to explain why these constructions are possible in

Germanic languages such as English or Dutch, but not in Romance languages such
as Catalan or Spanish: the Catalan examples in (4), which correspond to the exam-
ples in (1a), (2a), and (3a), are ungrammatical.

(4) a. *El cambrer fregà els plats secs. (Catalan)

The waiter wiped the dishes dry-pl
‘The waiter wiped the dishes dry.’
b. *El gos bordà els pollastres desperts.
The dog barked the chickens awake-pl
‘The dog barked the chickend awake.’
c. *El riu es congelà sòlid.
The river ES(reflexive pr.) froze solid-sg
‘The river froze solid.’

Unfortunately, there is some disagreement in the literature on resultatives as to

whether resultative constructions exist in Romance or not. For example, Green (1973),
Talmy (1985), Merlo (1989) or Snyder (1995), among others, pointed out that these
constructions do not exist in Romance, whereas Napoli (1992: 88) concluded that
«it appears that Romance languages in general exhibit resultatives». Quite clearly,
what is at issue here is what is meant by resultative construction and resultative
predicate. Once the proper distinctions are drawn, it will be shown that there is a
very real parametric issue involved in the present constructions, by virtue of which
Romance languages in general behave differently from Germanic languages.
Our paper is organized as follows. In Section 2, we show that the crosslinguistic
variation involved in the resultative construction cannot be accounted for by seman-
tic approaches in a principled way. Section 3 sketches out Hale & Keyser’s (1998,
1999) syntactic theory of argument structure, on which our analysis of resultatives
is based. An important modification of Hale & Keyser’s (1998) basic argument
structure types is argued to be motivated on principled grounds. As a result, the
homomorphic nature between the syntax and semantics of argument structure will
be seen to emerge in quite a natural way. In Section 4, Talmy’s (1985, 1991) descrip-
tive account of so-called conflation processes, of which the resultative is not but a
particular instantiation, is translated into the more explanatory terms provided by
Hale & Keyser’s theory of Lexical Syntax. Moreover, a crucial distinction between
true/non-adverbial resultatives (e.g., John hammered the metal flat) vs. false/adver-
CatWPL 8 001-137 29/5/2001 17:29 Página 74

74 CatWPL 8, 2000 Jaume Mateu Fontanals

bial resultatives (e.g., John cut the meat thin) must be drawn (Washio (1997)). Both
English and Catalan have false/adverbial resultatives but only English has true/non-
adverbial resultatives. Parametric variation in the lexical syntactic domain is argued
to be only relevant to true resultatives. Section 5 summarizes the main conclusions.

2. Semanticocentric Approaches to the Resultative Construction

In this section we will show that there is no principled way to account for the dif-
ferences noted between English and Catalan (cf. (1-4)) in terms of semantic or
aspectual operations available in the former language, but not in the latter.
To start with, we mention Levin & Rapoport’s (1988: 282) pioneering analysis
of the lexical subordination operation in (4b), a more sophisticated account of
which can also be found in Jackendoff’s (1990) lexicalist analysis. According to
Levin & Rapoport, this operation can be understood as a lexical rule whose effect
is that of extending the basic L(exical) C(onceptual) S(tructure) of a verb into a
derived LCS by means of a semantic operator (cf. BY in (4b)).

(4) a. Evelyn wiped the dishes.

wipe1: [x ‘wipe’ y]
b. Evelyn wiped the dishes dry.
wipe2: [x CAUSE [ y BECOME (AT) z] BY [x ‘wipe’ y]]

Basically, our main objection to Levin & Rapoport’s proposal runs as follows:
which theoretical and explanatory status can be attributed to their claim that there
are LCS operations available in English but not in Romance? As it stands, Levin &
Rapoport’s mere claim that a LCS operation called lexical subordination exists in
English but not in Romance, lacks a principled explanation.
The same criticism can also be argued to hold for non-syntactic approaches to
the resultative construction like Tenny’s (1994) aspectual analysis depicted in (5).
According to Tenny (1994: 200), «lexical subordination is actually an operation
over aspectual structure. It is an aspectual operation in which the MEASURE aspec-
tual role is added to an empty aspectual grid (…) Taking the simple basic mean-
ing of the verb and extending its sense by importing a result component into the
verb’s meaning amounts to an operation over aspectual structure».

(5) a. Evelyn wiped the dishes.

wipe1: Aspectual structure: [ ]
b. Evelyn wiped the dishes dry.
wipe2: Aspectual structure: [MEASURE]
c. wipe1 – – – → wipe2
Aspectual structure: [ ] – – – → [MEASURE]

Tenny appears to assume that Romance languages do not make use of the aspec-
tual operation informally represented in (5c). Unfortunately, a more explanatory
account on the basis of which such an assumption is made is not pursued.
CatWPL 8 001-137 29/5/2001 17:29 Página 75

A Lexical-Syntactic Approach to Resultative Constructions CatWPL 8, 2000 75

Similarly, the same problem arises when Pustejovsky’s (1991) event-type shift-
ing analysis is taken into account. According to Pustejovksy (1991: 64), «the resul-
tative construction involves what appears to be a systematic event-type shifting
from processes to transitions» (cf. (6)). He points out that the resultative con-
struction is not but an instantiation of a productive strategy of converting activi-
ties (i.e., «processes») into accomplishments (i.e., «transitions»). The accom-
plishment reading in (6b) emerges as a result of «adding» [sic] the resultative phrase
into the basic process verb.
(6) a. Mary hammered the metal (hammer process)
b. Mary hammered the metal flat (hammer transition)
Despite its intuitive plausibility, Pustejovsky’s analysis also runs into problems
when language variation is taken into account. Once again, the immediate ques-
tion to be solved is why some languages (e.g., Romance) do not make use of this
event-type shift strategy. A principled explanation of this non-trivial fact is not
addressed by Pustejovsky (1991) nor by their followers (e.g., van Hout (1996)).
Our main criticism to the presently reviewed semantic and aspectual approach-
es to the resultative construction can be formulated in the following terms: why
is it the case that lexical subordination or event-type shifting appear to be seman-
tic or aspectual operations available in English, but not in Romance? We are fully
convinced that a principled answer cannot be given to such a question precisely
because its very formulation is clearly inappropriate as well. To be sure, we agree
with their claiming that the difference is to be found in the lexicon. Otherwise,
where could it be found? This notwithstanding, we will show that the above-men-
tioned proposals have clearly missed the point when dealing with both the spe-
cific nature of the lexical rule called lexical subordination, and its range of oper-
ation. Quite crucially, we will show that both must be defined within the
lexical-syntactic domain (Hale & Keyser (1993, 1998)). This conclusion should be
taken as fairly natural. It is widely acknowledged that parametric variation can-
not be defined in purely semantic or aspectual terms. Accordingly, we will show
that the relevant explanation of the parametric issue involved in resultative con-
structions has nothing to do with the positive or negative application of some ad
hoc operations over the Lexical Conceptual Structure, the Aspectual Structure, or
the Event Structure, but with one empirical fact: i.e., the morphological proper-
ties associated to the lexical-syntactic element corresponding to the directional
relation are not the same in English as in Romance (cf. Snyder (1995) and Klipple
(1997) for related discussion).2

2. One important caveat is in order here: obviously, we do not intend to reduce the importance of
semantics by adopting a syntactic approach. Our lexical-syntactic account should not be regard-
ed as incompatible with Jackendoff’s (1990) or Goldberg’s (1995) works on the semantic
restrictions concerning the resultative construction(s). We have put them aside in the present
paper, because what we are mostly concerned with here is the status of the lexical subordi-
nation rule, its range of operation, and the parametric variation involved in the resultative con-
struction.
CatWPL 8 001-137 29/5/2001 17:29 Página 76

76 CatWPL 8, 2000 Jaume Mateu Fontanals

Before analyzing the relevant lexical parameter at issue, it will be useful to

sketch out the fundamentals of Hale & Keyser’s (1998, 1999) theory of argument
structure, which our analysis of resultatives will be argued to depend on. Quite
crucially, an important modification/reduction of their basic argument structure
combinations will be shown to be motivated by our unified approach to telic path
of motion constructions (e.g., The boy danced into the room) and adjectival resul-
tative constructions (e.g., The girl wiped the table clean).

3. The Syntax of Argument Structure

3.1. Hale & Keyser’s (1998, 1999) Theory of Argument Structure
Argument structure is conceived of by Hale & Keyser (1999: 453) as «the syntac-
tic configuration projected by a lexical item. Argument structure is the system of
structural relations holding between heads (nuclei) and the arguments linked to
them, as part of their entries in the lexicon. Although a lexical entry is much more
than this, of course, argument structure in the sense intended here is precisely this
and nothing more».
Their main assumptions, expressed informally, are those embodied in (7) (Hale
& Keyser (1999: 454)).
(7) Argument structure is defined in reference to two possible relations between
a head and its arguments, namely, the head-complement relation and the head-
specifier relation.
A given head (i.e., x in (8)) may enter into the following structural combina-
tions in (8): «these are its argument structure properties, and its syntactic behav-
ior is determined by these properties» (Hale & Keyser (1999: 455)).

(8) Head (x); complement (y of x), predicate (x of z)

a. x b. x c. α d. x

x y z x z α

x y α x

According to Hale & Keyser, the prototypical or unmarked morphosyntactic

realizations in English of the syntactic heads in (8) (i.e., the x’s) are the following:
V in (8a), P in (8b), A in (8c), and N in (8d).
The main empirical domain on which Hale & Keyser’s hypotheses are cur-
rently being tested includes denominal verbs (so-called unergative verbs like laugh
(cf. (9a)), transitive locative verbs like shelve (cf. (9b)), or locatum verbs like sad-
dle (cf. (9c))), and deadjectival verbs (e.g., clear (cf. (9d)).
CatWPL 8 001-137 29/5/2001 17:29 Página 77

A Lexical-Syntactic Approach to Resultative Constructions CatWPL 8, 2000 77

(9) a. John laughed.

b. John shelved the book.
c. John saddled the horse.
d. John cleared the screen.
Unergative verbs are argued to be transitive since they involve merging a noun
with a verbal head (cf. (8a)), this resulting in (10a); both locative and locatum verbs
involve merging the structural combination in (8b) into that of (8a):3 cf. (10b).
Finally, transitive deadjectival verbs also involve two structural combinations, i.e.,
that in (8c) is merged into that of (8a): cf. (10c).

(10) a. V

V N

laugh
b. V

V P

N P

{book/horse P N

{shelf/saddle}
c. V

V V

N V

screen V A

clear

3. Hale & Keyser propose the same argument structure configuration for both locative and locatum
verbs. The main difference between them is a semantic one: while the P involved in the argument
structure of (9b) is a terminal coincidence relation (cf. John put the book onto the shelf), the P
involved in the argument structure of (9c) is a central coincidence relation (cf. John provided the
horse with a saddle).
CatWPL 8 001-137 29/5/2001 17:29 Página 78

78 CatWPL 8, 2000 Jaume Mateu Fontanals

Locative and locatum verbs are always transitive (*the book shelved/ *the horse
saddled}), because their inner P-projection cannot occur as an autonomous pred-
icate. By contrast, deadjectival verbs can be intransitive (i.e., unaccusative: the
screen cleared), since their inner V-projection can occur as an autonomous predi-
cate.4
Furthermore, as justified in Hale & Keyser (1993), the external argument of
transitive constructions (unergatives included) is said to be truly external to the
argument structure configuration. It will appear as the specifier of a functional pro-
jection in s(entential)-syntax (cf. also Kratzer (1996)).
Both denominal and deadjectival verbs implicate a process of conflation, essen-
tially an operation that copies a full phonological matrix into an empty one, this
operation being carried out in a strictly local configuration: i.e., in a head-com-
plement one.5 If Conflation can be argued to be concomitant of Merge (Hale &
Keyser (1999)), the argument structures in (10) turn out to be quite abstract since
they have been depicted as abstracted away from the conflation processes involved
in the examples in (9). Applying the conflation operation to (10a) involves copy-
ing the full phonological matrix of the noun laugh into the empty one corresponding
to the verb. Applying it to (10b) involves two steps: the full phonological matrix
of the noun {shelf/saddle}is first copied into the empty one corresponding to the
preposition; since the phonological matrix corresponding to the verb is also empty,
the conflation applies again from the saturated phonological matrix of the prepo-
sition to the unsaturated matrix of the verb. Finally, applying the conflation process
to (10c) involves two steps as well: the full phonological matrix of the adjective
clear is first copied into the empty one corresponding to the internal verb; since
the phonological matrix corresponding to the external verb is also empty, the con-
flation applies again from the saturated phonological matrix of the inner verb to
the unsaturated matrix of the external verb.

3.2. On the Non-primitive Status of Argument Structure Properties of Adjectives

In this subsection, we will try to show that the structural combination in (8c) does
not have a primitive status in the syntactic theory of argument structure. In partic-
ular, our claim is that the lexical head x in (8c) is not a primitive element of Lexical
Syntax, as in Hale & Keyser’s approach, but a composite unit: the lexical head x
in (8c), whose unmarked morphosyntactic realization in English is the category
Adjective (A), can be argued to be decomposed into two more primitive lexical-
syntactic elements:6 we claim that A involves the conflation of a non-relational
element like that expressed by the lexical head y in (8b) into a relational element like
that expressed by the lexical head x in (8b). That is to say, the structural combina-
tion in (8b) allows us to account for the argument structure properties of As as

4. Crucially, note it can be associated with tense morphology.

5. The conflation from a specifier is banned (cf. Hale & Keyser (1993)).
6. At first glance, this hypothesis should not be surprising at all: the fact that the A category is miss-
ing in some languages is coherent with its secondary status.
CatWPL 8 001-137 29/5/2001 17:29 Página 79

A Lexical-Syntactic Approach to Resultative Constructions CatWPL 8, 2000 79

well. Accordingly, the argument structure of the small clause involved in two sen-
tences like those in (11a-b) turns out to be the same: cf. (11c). Quite crucially, we
claim that the conflation of y into x involved in A accounts for both its relational or
predicative character, which A shares with P, and its nominal properties, which A
shares with N.7
(11) a. is [the cat [in the room]]
b. is [the cat [happy]]
c. is [x z [x x y]]
Besides these morphosyntactic facts, the decomposition of adjectives into a
relational element plus a non-relational element appears to be quite natural from
a conceptual perspective as well. For example, from a Jackendovian perspective, the
Conceptual Structure assigned to (12a) can be argued to contain a relational ele-
ment introducing an abstract Place (AT). In fact, this extension is clearly expect-
ed under the so-called Thematic Relations Hypothesis (Gruber (1965), Jackendoff
(1983, 1990), according to which the same conceptual functions we use when deal-
ing with physical space (e.g., BE, GO, AT, TO, etc. ) can also be applied to our
conception of abstract space.8
(12) a. The door is open.
b. [State BE [Thing DOOR], [Place AT [Property OPEN]]]
More interestingly for the purposes of our present paper, the above-mentioned
parallelism between physical and abstract spatial domains receives in turn further
empirical support when considering the crosslinguistic morphosyntactic proper-
ties of resultative predicates: e.g., not only do Romance languages lack adjectival
resultative constructions like the one in (13a), but prepositional ones like the one in
(13b) are missing in these languages as well:9

(13) a. Joe kicked the door open.

a’. * El Joe colpejà la porta oberta. (Catalan)
The Joe kick-past-3rd.sing the door open
b. Joe kicked the dog into the bathroom.
b’. *El Joe colpejà el gos a dins el bany.
The Joe kick-past-3rd.sing the dog inside the bathroom

As shown below in Section 4, the «reduction» of the syntactic configura-

tion in (8c) to the one in (8b) will be empirically motivated by our crosslin-

7. For example, the fact that languages like Latin mark As with morphological case can be taken as
empirical evidence in favor of their nominal nature.
8. See Jackendoff (1990: 250) for a localistic analysis of the LCS corresponding to the
{causative/inchoative} verb open.
9. (13a’) and (13b’) are grammatical on the following irrelevant readings: (13a’) is grammatical
if A is interpreted not as resultative but as attributive: i.e., ‘the open door’; (13b’) is grammati-
cal if the PP has a locative, non-directional reading: i.e., ‘the kicking took place inside the bath-
room’.
CatWPL 8 001-137 29/5/2001 17:29 Página 80

80 CatWPL 8, 2000 Jaume Mateu Fontanals

guistic analysis of resultatives: the lexical-syntactic element corresponding to

the Path relation involved in both prepositional and adjectival resultatives will
be argued to be the same, this being explicit in the former, but covert in the lat-
ter. If we are willing to maintain that the relevant explanation accounting for
the data in (13) is basically morphosyntactic rather than purely semantic, it will
be seen inevitable to decompose adjectival resultatives in two different lexical
syntactic elements: the parameter must have access to the relational element
incorporated in As, i.e., that corresponding to the Path relation. That is to say, to
the extent that both prepositional and adjectival resultatives are treated in a uni-
form way as far as the lexical parameter is concerned, the decomposition of
adjectival resultative predicates into two lexical-syntactic elements appears to
be justified.10

3.3. Argument Structure Meets Homomorphism

We want to argue that the reduction of (8c) to (8b) is not only empirically sup-
ported, as we have pointed out in the latter section, but is welcome from a theo-
retical perspective as well. The purpose of the present subsection is to show that
this reduction strengthens the theoretically desirable claim that there is a strong
homomorphism between the syntax and semantics of argument structure.11 Such
a proposal could be argued to depart from Hale & Keyser’s (1999: 465) claim: «the
fact that structures can carry meaning is orthogonal to our program», but we think
that this is a prompt conclusion. In fact, our present proposal partakes of both Hale
& Keyser’s (1993) paper, where certain meanings were associated with certain
structures, and their (1999) paper, where a refinement of the basic argument struc-
ture types is presented. Quite importantly, we will argue that the reduction pro-
posed above allows us to synthesize these two compatible proposals in quite an

10. Quite probably, Hale & Keyser would not accept such a modification or reduction of their argu-
ment structure types, since the causative/inchoative alternation is presented by them as an impor-
tant point that forces them to maintain the structural distinction between the denominal verbs that
involve Merge of (8b) into (8a) and the deadjectival verbs that involve Merge of (8c) into (8a).
According to them, this structural distinction explains why the former are always transitive, where-
as the latter can have an intransitive variant (the α verbal head in (8c) being then inflected with
Tense).
However, as Kiparsky (1997) has shown, such a generalization is not well-grounded. According
to him, denominal verbs can participate in the causative/inchoative alternation if they denote events
that can proceed without an explicit animate agent: e.g., cf. pile (up), land, carbonize, oxidize, etc.
On the other hand, there are deadjectival verbs that can not participate in such an alternation: e.g.,
cf. legalize, visualize, etc.
That is to say, the relevant conclusion appears to be the following: the fact that denominal verbs
do not enter into the causative/inchoative alternation is not due to a purely structural source, as
Hale & Keyser propose, but to the fact that they often involve an animate agent. Rebus sic stan-
tibus, the main objection that Hale & Keyser could entertain with respect to our eliminating the
apparently basic combination of (8c) vanishes.
11. See Bouchard (1995), Baker (1997), and Mateu (1999) for discussion on the homomorphic nature
between the syntactic and semantic structures.
CatWPL 8 001-137 29/5/2001 17:29 Página 81

A Lexical-Syntactic Approach to Resultative Constructions CatWPL 8, 2000 81

elegant and simple way. Given this reduction, the basic, irreducible argument struc-
ture types turn out to be those in (14).

(14) a. x b. x c. x

x y z x

x y

We claim that the reduction of (8) to (14) allows homomorphism to show up

in the terms expressed in (15): given (15), the relational semantics of argument
structure can be argued to be directly read off from its corresponding relational
syntax (Mateu (2000)).

(15) a. The lexical head x in the syntactic configuration in (14a) is always to be

associated to an Eventive relation.
b. The lexical head x in the syntactic configuration in (14b) is always to be
associated to a Spatial relation.
c. The lexical head x in the syntactic configuration in (14c) is always to be
associated to a Non-relational element.

The Eventive relation which is uniformly associated with the x in (14a) can be
instantiated as two different semantic relations: If there is an external argument in
the specifier position of the relevant F(unctional) projection (e.g., v in Chomsky
(1995) or Voice in Kratzer (1996)), the Eventive relation will be instantiated as a
Source relation, the external argument being interpreted as Originator (cf. Borer
(1994) and Mateu (1999)). If there is no external argument, the Eventive relation will
be instantiated as a Transitional relation (cf. Mateu (1999)), which in turn always
select a Spatial relation (cf. (15b)), whose specifier and complement are interpret-
ed as Figure and Ground, respectively (this terminology being borrowed from
Talmy (1985)). Therefore, a further claim should be added to (15):

(15) a’. The lexical head x in the syntactic configuration in (14a) is always to be
associated to an Eventive relation: if there is an external argument, it is
interpreted as a Source relation; otherwise, it is interpreted as a
Transitional relation.

It is then important to realize that both instantiations of the Eventive rela-

tion (i.e., the Source and the Transitional relations) can also be directly read
off from the pure relational syntax (cf. (15a’)):12 While the Source relation is

12. In this sense, our proposal is similar to that developed by Harley (1995). The main difference is
that, with Hale and Keyser (1993), we do not analyze the syntactic head associated to the Eventive
relation as a functional one.
CatWPL 8 001-137 29/5/2001 17:29 Página 82

82 CatWPL 8, 2000 Jaume Mateu Fontanals

that involved in transitive structures (cf. x1 in (16)) and unergative structures

(cf. x in (17)), the Transitional relation is that involved in unaccusative struc-
tures (cf. x1 in (18)).
Accordingly, the only structural difference between transitive structures (cf.
(16)) and unergative structures (cf. (17)) is based on the type of complement select-
ed by the Source relation: while a Spatial relation is selected in (16) as comple-
ment, it is a non-relational element that is selected in (17). As a result, note that
the transitive structure in (16) can be argued to partake of both an unergative struc-
ture (the Eventive relation x1 is interpreted as a Source relation due to the presence
of an external argument) and an unaccusative structure (it includes a Spatial rela-
tion x2 expressed in a Figure-Ground configuration). See Mateu (2000) for more
discussion.

(16) Transitive structure

z1 F

F x1

x1 x2

z2 x2

x2 y

(17) Unergative structure

z F

F x

x y
CatWPL 8 001-137 29/5/2001 17:29 Página 83

A Lexical-Syntactic Approach to Resultative Constructions CatWPL 8, 2000 83

(18) Unaccusative structure

x1

x1 x2

z x2

x2 y

Given our configurational/relational theory of argument structure, an impor-

tant difference between structural semantic features and contentful ones must be
crucially drawn (Mateu (1999)). As shown above, structural semantic features like
Eventive ({Source/Transitional}), Spatial, and Non-relational can be directly read
off from the relational syntax of argument structure configurations. By contrast,
we claim that the contentful values that can be associated with the structural ones
are not relevant to the syntactic projection of argument structure. That is to say,
we claim that contentful notions like terminal coincidence relation, central coin-
cidence relation, BECOME, BE, etc., are not directly relevant to the syntactic pro-
jection of arguments. Let us verify this claim by contrasting the minimal pairs
(19a)-(19b) and (19c)-(19d).

(19) a. John went to the hall.

b. The spoon is on the table.
c. John corraled the horse.
d. John pushed the horse.

Despite the different contentful values associated with the Transitional rela-
tion (the positive one in (19a), say BECOME, and the negative one in (19b), say
BE), and despite the different ones associated with the Spatial relation (say, ter-
minal coincidence relation in (19a), and central coincidence relation in (19b)),
it is nevertheless clear that both (19a) and (19b) are indistinguishable as far as
their syntactic projection of arguments is concerned. We argue that this is due to
the fact that both project the same argument structure, that in (18): cf. (20).
Similarly, the same reasoning should be valid with respect to the pair (19c) (19d):
e.g., although (19c) involves an abstract terminal coincidence relation and (19d) an
abstract central coincidence relation, both project the same argument structure, the
one in (16).13

13. Similarly, notice that Hale & Heyser assign both locative and locatum verbs the very same argument
structure (cf. (10b)), despite the fact that the former are said to involve a terminal coincidence rela-
tion, while the latter are said to contain a central coincidence relation.
CatWPL 8 001-137 29/5/2001 17:29 Página 84

84 CatWPL 8, 2000 Jaume Mateu Fontanals

(20) a. went [John [to the hall]]

b. is [the spoon [on the table]]

Quite importantly, if the conceptual content (i.e., the semantics not to be

read off from syntax) is said to be irrelevant to the syntactic projection of argu-
ments (Mateu (1999, 2000)), note that there is no need to make use of so-called
linking rules (cf. Pinker (1989) or Levin & Rappaport Hovav (1995)), which
have been motivated on the basis of recognizing that there are some syntacti-
cally relevant aspects of meaning (e.g., Change, Affectedness, Existence,
Causation, etc.). With Baker (1997: 131), we assume that such rules can be
dispensed with, this being due to our accepting a configurational theory of argu-
ment structure which is fully compatible with a strong version of U(niformity)
T(heta) A(ssignment) H(ypothesis) such as that argued for by Baker (1997) and
Mateu & Rigau (2000).
This said, one important caveat is in order here: of course, our claiming that
contentful values are irrelevant to the syntactic projection of arguments does not
mean that they are irrelevant to grammatical processes.14 We are just claiming that
they do not determine how arguments are projected to the syntax, this task being only
carried out by the structural semantic features, i.e., those that can be directly read
off from relational syntax.
With this sketchily reviewed theoretical background in mind, let us now deal with
our lexical-syntactic analysis of resultative constructions.

4. Resultative Constructions and Parametric Variation: A Lexical-Syntactic

Approach
First of all, we want to spell out one important methodological assumption that
appears to be relevant in stating the main goals of our lexical-syntactic approach
to resultative constructions. Unlike syntactic approaches such as Hoekstra’s (1988,
1992), Carrier & Randall’s (1992), or Neeleman’s (1994), we have taken pains to
work out an explanation of why some languages (e.g., Romance) lack (true) resul-
tative constructions.
The parametric issue involved in resultative constructions has also been recent-
ly studied by Snyder (1995), whose main proposal is based on the claim that English
differs from Romance in permitting a phonologically null aspectual morpheme.
According to Snyder (1995: 463-464), «in a language such as French or Spanish,
however, in which the Øtelic morpheme is unavailable, the addition of a secondary

14. To take a well-known example, it is often argued that so-called change of state verbs like break
but not activity verbs like push can form middles or allow object-oriented depictive secondary
predication (see Rapoport (1993), among others).
More relevant for our present purposes (i.e., the study of resultative predication) is the fact that
it is obvious that one must distinguish between directional relations and locative relations, even
though both become neutralized (i.e., they are simply Spatial relations) as far as the syntactic pro-
jection of arguments is concerned (cf. the above discussion on (19a)-(19b)). However, it is clear
that only the former are relevant to resultative predication.
CatWPL 8 001-137 29/5/2001 17:29 Página 85

A Lexical-Syntactic Approach to Resultative Constructions CatWPL 8, 2000 85

path predicate alone, even if it includes in its meaning a natural endpoint, should be
insufficient to convert a process VP into an accomplishment VP».
Our lexical-syntactic approach will be shown to differ from Snyder’s in at least
two important respects: on the one hand, it will not be necessary for us to make
use of poorly motivated elements like Snyder’s telic morpheme, argued to be pre-
sent in English but not in Romance. On the other hand, we will make it clear that
Pustejovsky’s (1991) or Snyder’s (1995) intuitive observation that a process VP is
«converted» into an accomplishment VP by the «addition» of a resultative predicate
cannot receive an adequate explanation within the lexical-syntactic perspective
pursued here. Rather, we will show that it is more theoretically and empirically
adequate to posit that there is a main abstract accomplishment into which a sub-
ordinate process is conflated. In other words, the «added» element is not the resul-
tative phrase, but the process verb.
In particular, we want to argue that the explanation of the lack of true resulta-
tives in Romance must be sought in Talmy’s (1985) insights on so-called lexical-
ization patterns. Talmy’s lexicalization patterns (e.g., conflation of Motion with
Path in Catalan (see (21a)) vs. conflation of Motion with Manner in English (see
(21b))15 have been shown to be provided with explanatory power when translated
into syntactic terms (cf. Mateu & Rigau (1999, 2000)).

(21) a. El noi va entrar a la habitació ballant. (Catalan)

The boy went+into loc-prep the room dancing
b. The boy danced into the room.

Our main proposal is that the parameterization of the conflation processes

involved in (21) is sensitive to the nature of the morphosyntactic properties asso-
ciated with one lexical-syntactic element, that expressing directionality. In Romance
(e.g., Catalan), it is usually the case that the directional/Path relation is lexically
conflated into the verb (and hence its so-called verb-framed nature), while in English
it is not (and hence its so-called satellite-framed nature).16 Quite interestingly, the
fact that this conflation is a fossilized process in Catalan has important conse-
quences. As a reflex of this fossilized process, the morphosyntactic features cor-
responding to the complex verbal head formed by the motion verb plus the direc-
tional relation cannot be distinguished any longer. That is to say, the verbal form
entrar (‘to go into’) is an atom as far as its morphophonological status is concerned:
i.e., which morphophonological properties correspond to the verb and which ones
to the directional preposition/particle cannot be distinguished. As argued by Mateu
& Rigau (1999, 2000), the most important consequence of such a lexical satura-
tion is that this fossilized lexicalization prevents Catalan from conflating Motion with
Manner.

15. One caveat is in order here concerning apparent counterexamples: As noted by Talmy (1985), the
existence of English verbs like enter, exit, descend, etc., is due to Latin influence. Accordingly,
these examples fall out of the scope of the Germanic lexicalization pattern.
16. See Talmy (1991) for the distinction verb-framed languages vs. satellite-framed languages.
CatWPL 8 001-137 29/5/2001 17:29 Página 86

86 CatWPL 8, 2000 Jaume Mateu Fontanals

By contrast, in satellite-framed languages like English the directional prepo-

sition/particle is not conflated into the verb. Unless the V of the unaccusative lexical-
syntactic structure in (22a) does have phonological content (e.g., The boy went into
the room), a complex verbal head from an independent lexical-syntactic structure
(e.g., the unergative one in (22b)) is then required to be conflated into the unsatu-
rated V of (22a). We want to argue that this requirement can be said to be related
to Hale & Keyser’s (1998) external condition of avoiding phonologically empty
matrices at PF.
(22)
a. V b. V

V P V N
[ ] [ ] dance
N P
boy
P N
into room

Following Hale & Keyser (1997), we postulate that the lexical-syntactic analy-
sis of (21b) involves a recently rediscovered device in Chomsky’s (1995) Minimalist
Program: a generalized transformation. Basically, this kind of syntactic operation
can be argued to take two different structures and fuse them into only one. In (21b)
it can be argued that the relevant syntactic operation takes the unergative lexical-syn-
tactic structure in (22b) and fuses it into the unaccusative one in (22a). In (23) such
a conflation process has been depicted as being carried out via substitution: the
main unaccusative verb in (22a) has been replaced by the subordinate unergative ver-
bal head in (22b). As noted above, such a substitution process appears to be moti-
vated by the external reason that phonologically null matrices must be eliminated
at PF. Given this, the phonological content associated to (22b) is transferred to the
empty matrix of V in (22a).

(23)
V

V P

V N N P
dance boy
P N
into room
CatWPL 8 001-137 29/5/2001 17:29 Página 87

A Lexical-Syntactic Approach to Resultative Constructions CatWPL 8, 2000 87

Quite interestingly, the generalized transformation operation is easily explained

under Chomsky’s (1995, 1998, 1999) minimalist assumptions: Grammar appears
to be organized in such a way that the computational system allows different syn-
tactic structures to be derived «in parallel». Merge, which is the most fundamental
operation of the computational system, will undertake the task of conflating them
into only one structure (cf. Mateu & Rigau (2000)).
It is now clear why Pustejovksy’s (1991) or Snyder’s (1995) intuition-based
observation that a process VP (e.g., dance) can be converted into an accomplishment
VP by «adding» a directional PP (e.g., into Y) to the former, is nothing more than
a by-product of a surface illusion. Despite appearances, it is the unergative struc-
ture that comes to be subordinated to the main unaccusative structure. Accordingly,
it is the process verb dance, but not the directional phrase into the room, that must
be regarded as the «added» element.
On the other hand, our claim is that the use of generalized transformations in the
lexical-syntactic domain is not only limited to covering cases involving a verb
expressing Manner plus a directional PP. If we want to provide a unified explana-
tion of Talmy’s (1985) lexicalization patterns, our lexical-syntactic analysis will
have to be extended to AP resultative constructions as well, those involving an
abstract Path (cf. Jackendoff (1990) or Goldberg (1995)). Quite clearly, it should be
desirable to appeal to the same reason when explaining both the ungrammaticali-
ty of the Catalan examples in (24) and (25).17
(24) a. *Ell va ballar a dins de l’ habitació. (Catalan)
He danced inside of the room
b. *Ells van riure l’espectacle fora de la ciutat.
They laughed the show out of the town
c. *Ell va xutar la pilota a dins del bany.
He kicked the ball inside of the bathroom
a’. He danced into the room.
b’. They laughed the show out of the town.
c’. He kicked the ball into the bathroom.
(25) a. *La noia va fregar la taula neta.
The girl wiped the table clean
b. *Ella va martellejar el metall pla.
She hammered the metal flat
c. *Ell va empènyer la porta oberta.
He pushed the door open
a’. The girl wiped the table clean.
b’. She hammered the metal flat.
c’. He pushed the door open.

17. The examples in (24a, c) are grammatical on the irrelevant locative reading (e.g., ‘He was dancing
at a fixed location’). Similarly, the examples in (25) are grammatical on the irrelevant attributive
reading (e.g, la taula neta, ‘the clean table’).
CatWPL 8 001-137 29/5/2001 17:29 Página 88

88 CatWPL 8, 2000 Jaume Mateu Fontanals

If the present parallelism is to be maintained, the prediction is that resultative

constructions involving conflation of two different lexical-syntactic structures are
absent from Romance, but not from English. That is, if our analysis is on the right
track, the ungrammaticality of the Catalan examples in (25) could be explained as
follows: it is the case that the lexical-syntactic element corresponding to the abstract
directional relation is lexically conflated into the verb in Romance. That is to say, its
verb-framed nature involves obligatory conflation of the directional relation into
the verb. As a result, the conflation of this complex verbal head with lexical mate-
rial from another independent lexical-syntactic object turns out to be excluded.
On the other hand, the satellite-framed nature of English allows the abstract
Path constituent involved in resultatives (e.g., clean in (25a’)) to be left stranded.
As a result, the phonologically null matrix of the transitive verb in (26a) must be sat-
urated by another full matrix from an independent lexical-syntactic object, e.g.,
the one in (26b). Due to the satellite nature of the abstract directional relation X in
(26a), the phonologically null matrix of the abstract causative verb in (26a) must be
saturated by an external lexical-syntactic object: it appears to be saturated by the
phonological content provided by the verbal head in (26b). The fusion or conflation
of the subordinate verb in (26b) into the main verb in (26a) is depicted in (27):18

(26)
a. V b. V

V X V N
[ ] [ ] wipe
N X
table
X Y
[ ] clean

(27)
V

V X

V N N P
wipe table
X Y
clean

18. Recall that, with Hale & Keyser (1998), we assume that the external argument (i.e., the girl) is to
be introduced by the relevant functional projection (be it Chomsky’s (1995) v or Kratzer’s (1996)
Voice Phrase).
CatWPL 8 001-137 29/5/2001 17:29 Página 89

A Lexical-Syntactic Approach to Resultative Constructions CatWPL 8, 2000 89

Therefore, the lexical-syntactic operation accounting for the so-called lexical sub-
ordination process (e.g., cf. Levin & Rapoport (1988), Mateu & Amadas (1999)) has
been shown to be constrained by the nature of the morphophonological properties
associated with lexical-syntactic elements.
Let us now deal with some interesting predictions of our parametric approach
to resultative constructions. Note that an important generalization emerges from
our lexical-syntactic analysis: namely, there are no Path adjectives in Romance,
because the directional/Path relation is always conflated into the verb. Hence, it is
no surprising at all that sentences like those in (28) are fully impossible in
Romance.19 Recall that the conflation of the directional/Path element into the verb
in Romance excludes its conflation with a complex head from an independent lex-
ical-syntactic object.

(28) a. She danced/swam/sprinted free of her captors.

b. However, if fire is an immediate danger, you must jump clear of the vehi-
cle. (Illinois rules of the road, 1989 edition, p. 81) [italics in original]

Our proposal is then that the sentences in (28) involve a conflation of unerga-
tive verbs such as dance, swim, sprint, jump into an abstract unaccusative verb
expressing motion. Therefore, the same analysis of (23) is valid for the sentences
in (28): the Path constituent formed by free/clear can be stranded in English due to
its satellite-framed nature. The subordinate unergative structure corresponding
to dancing, swimming, etc., can then come to be integrated into the main unac-
cusative structure by means of a generalized transformation.
It is then the case that adjectives in Romance can not contain a directional/Path
relation. Concerning the existence of so-called pure resultatives in Romance, it
seems plausible to assume that the adjectival phrase in (29) corresponds to an abstract
Place constituent, the Path/directional relation being conflated into the verb. This
accounts for the usual classification of tornar or deixar as directional verbs.

(29) a. Ells es tornaren bojos.

They ES go+path crazy
‘They went crazy.’
b. El Pep va deixar la Maria embarassada.
Pep cause+path Mary pregnant
‘Pep made Mary pregnant.’

Finally, we will conclude this section with a brief discussion on an important dis-
tinction that has often been neglected in the literature on resultative constructions.
We will make it clear that two types of resultatives must be distinguished clearly:
true/non-adverbial resultatives vs. false/adverbial resultatives. The existence of the
latter in Romance languages has been attested in many works (e.g., cf. Bosque

19. The data in (28) come from Levin & Rappaport Hovav (1996: 499).
CatWPL 8 001-137 29/5/2001 17:29 Página 90

90 CatWPL 8, 2000 Jaume Mateu Fontanals

(1990), Demonte (1991), Demonte & Masullo (1999), Morimoto (1998), Napoli
(1992), among others). Although Romance resultatives have been classified some-
times as normal resultatives, it is however clear that they do not behave as true
resultatives but as adverbial modifiers. Next we will review some evidence put for-
ward by Washio (1997) that shows their «adverbial» status.20 Consider the French
data in (30) from Washio (1997: 29).

(30) a. J’ ai noué les lacets de mes chaussures bien serré.

I tied the laces of my shoes very tight
b. Hachez-les menu. (les = the onions).
Cut them fine (i.e., into fine pieces)

As noted by Washio, adjectives like those found in (30) have traditionally

been treated as «adverbs» or «adjectives used as adverbs» (e.g., cf. Grevisse
(1980)). It is interesting to note that in French the «adverbial» nature of the adjec-
tives in (30) is coherent with their formal property of lacking agreement.21 Quite
correctly, Washio (1997: 17) relates the data in (30) to the possibility that these
adjectives can often alternate with adverbs with virtually no difference in mean-
ing (cf. (31)):

(31) a. He tied his shoelaces tight/tightly.

b. He tied his shoelaces loose/loosely.
c. He spread the butter thick/thickly.

Moreover, Washio observes that the standard paraphrase used by the propo-
nents of the lexical subordination approach is not valid when applied to «adver-
bial» resultatives (cf. (32)- (33)):22

20. More evidence in favor of the «adverbial» (that is, non-argumental) nature of Romance resulta-
tives can be found in Legendre (1997). Here we will limit ourselves to quoting the conclusion
arrived at by Legendre (1997: 81): «French resultative secondary predicates have properties that dis-
tinguish them from English and Dutch resultatives (...) they are adjuncts rather than arguments,
and they are adjoined to VP».
We will not comment on the syntactic analysis of false/«adverbial» resultatives here (cf. Legendre
(1997)).
21. This notwithstanding, in Romance languages like Catalan or Spanish, the adjectives in (30) are
not «used as adverbs», but agree with the noun:
(i) a. M’ he lligat els cordons de les sabates ben estrets.
Me-dat have-1st tied the laces of the shoes very tight-pl
b. Talla-les menudes.
Cut-them fine-pl
Both estrets and menudes are false resultatives; see the following footnote.
22. To be sure, more tests can be worked out. For example, the question-test in (i) is also valid for dis-
tinguishing «adverbial» (cf. (ia)) from true (cf. (ib)) resultatives.
(i) a. How did John paint the wall? (cf. John painted the wall red)
b. *How did the diva sing the audience? (cf. The diva sang the audience asleep)
CatWPL 8 001-137 29/5/2001 17:30 Página 91

A Lexical-Syntactic Approach to Resultative Constructions CatWPL 8, 2000 91

(32) a. He cut the meat thick.

b. # He caused the meat to become thick by cutting it.
(33) a. He hammered the metal flat.
b. = He caused the metal to become flat by hammering (on) it.

Given the present discussion, we are now well-prepared to comment on the

possible reasons that forced Napoli (1992: 88) to conclude that «it appears that
Romance languages in general exhibit resultatives». Actually, it seems to us that she
included any element with a sense of resultativity under the label of «resultative
predicate».
Consider Napoli’s (1992: 72) observation: «While Italian does not have the
types of resultatives exemplified in Sue laughed Ralph out of the room (given that
it lacks productive linking flexibility) and Sam cried himself sick, it does have tran-
sitive sentences with resultatives of the type exemplified for English in That butch-
er slices meat thin. However, the exact translation of English The river froze solid
is at best marginal and at worst ungrammatical, as we saw in ?*Il fiume è ghiacciato
solido».
Her observation can be explained as follows. Italian has «adverbial» resulta-
tives like the butcher slices meat thin or John painted the wall white, but not the
true resultatives found in English, namely, those lacking an adverbial character like
the river froze solid or the dog barked the chickens awake.23
The «adverbial» nature of Romance resultative predicates can actually be relat-
ed to the fact that they are generally combined with change of state verbs but not
with process verbs, as shown by Napoli’s (1992: 77) examples in (34):

(34) a. Gli operai hanno caricato il camion pieno al massimo.

The workers loaded the truck full to the brim
‘The workers loaded the truck full to the brim.’
b. *Gianni ha martellato il metallo piatto
Gianni hammered the metal flat
‘Gianni hammered the metal flat.’

The contrast in (34) can be explained as follows: the AP pieno al massimo in

(34a) acts as a modifier of the result lexically encoded into the verb caricare (‘load’).
We fully agree with Morimoto’s (1998) claim that resultative phrases in Romance
can only specify or intensify the result encoded into the main verb. That is to say,
the result state has to be present in the verb. Accordingly, note that the label of
«resultative» for such modifiers is not but a misnomer. Our claim that «adverbial»
resultatives are modifiers forces us to conclude that they must appear outside of

23. Moreover, note that Napoli’s claim that «<Italian> lacks productive linking flexibility» boils down
to a pure observation that appears to be naturally explained by our lexical-syntactic approach.
Crucially, its lacking linking flexibility must be related to the fact that Italian is a verb-framed lan-
guage.
CatWPL 8 001-137 29/5/2001 17:30 Página 92

92 CatWPL 8, 2000 Jaume Mateu Fontanals

the main argument structure of the sentence: they are adjoined to VP (cf. Legendre
(1997)).
On the other hand, the ungrammaticality of (34b) is coherent with the absence
of true/non-adverbial resultatives in Romance. We have argued that true resulta-
tives must be internal to the main argument structure of the sentence (cf. (26a)).
The relevant conclusion to be drawn from the present discussion appears to be
the following one: the existence of false/adverbial resultatives in Romance lan-
guages cannot be used as an argument against the predictions of our parametric
approach to (true/non-adverbial) resultatives.

5. Concluding Remarks
We have shown that semanticocentric approaches cannot explain the para-
metric variation in a principled way. The basic explanation of the parametric
issue involved in resultative constructions has been related to one empirical fact,
namely, the morphological properties associated with the lexical-syntactic ele-
ment corresponding to the directional relation are not the same in English as in
Romance.
We have concluded that resultatives involving conflation of two different lex-
ical-syntactic structures are present in English but not in Romance: it is the case
in English that the abstract Path constituent encoded into the resultative phrase can
remain stranded due to its satellite-framed nature (Talmy (1991)), and thus the
cross-sentential conflation carried out by Merge can take place. By contrast,
Romance does not have the aforementioned resultatives because of its verb-framed
nature (Talmy (1991)).
Unlike the semanticocentric approaches, we have argued that the relevant lex-
ical subordination process involves a syntactic operation, rather than a semantic
one. The fact that the syntactic operation has been shown to be constrained by lex-
ically encoded morphological features is coherent with Chomsky’s (1995, 1998)
minimalist approach. With Mateu & Rigau (1999, 2000), we conclude that para-
metric variation can be related not only to the morphological properties associated
to functional categories, as has been argued by Borer (1984) or Chomsky (1995),
among others, but also to those associated with lexical categories, as has been inde-
pendently shown by Snyder (1995) or Juffs (1996), among others.

References
Baker, M. (1997). «Thematic Roles and Syntactic Structure». In Haegeman, L. (ed.).
Elements of Grammar. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers.
Borer, H. (1984). Parametric Syntax. Dordrecht: Foris.
— (1994). «The Projection of Arguments». In Benedicto, E.; Runner, J. (eds.).
Functional Projections. UMOP 17. Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts,
19-47.
Bosque, I. (1990). «Sobre el aspecto en los adjetivos y en los participios». In Bosque, I.
(ed.). Tiempo y aspecto en español. Madrid: Cátedra, 177-214.
CatWPL 8 001-137 29/5/2001 17:30 Página 93

A Lexical-Syntactic Approach to Resultative Constructions CatWPL 8, 2000 93

Bouchard, D. (1995). The Semantics of Syntax. A Minimalist Approach to Grammar.

Chicago & London: The University of Chicago Press.
Carrier, J.; Randall, J. (1992). «The Argument Structure and Syntactic Structure of
Resultatives». Linguistic Inquiry 23: 173-234.
Chomsky, N. (1995). The Minimalist Program. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
— (1998). «Minimal Inquiries: The Framework». MIT, unpublished manuscript.
— (1999). «Derivation by Phase». MIT, unpublished manuscript.
Demonte, V. (1991). «Temporal and Aspectual Constraints on Predicative AP’s». In
Campos, H.; Martínez-Gil, F. (eds.). Current Studies in Spanish Linguistics.
Washington: Georgetown University Press, 1-34.
Demonte, V.; Masullo, P.J. (1999). «La predicación: Los complementos predicativos».
In Bosque, I.; Demonte, V. (eds.). Gramática Descriptiva de la Lengua Española
(vol. 2). Madrid: Espasa, 2461-2523.
Goldberg, A. (1995). Constructions. A Constructional Approach to Argument Structure.
Chicago & London: The University of Chicago Press.
Green, G. (1973). «A Syntactic Syncretism in English and French». In Kachru, B. et
al. (eds.). Issues in Linguistics. Urbana, Ill.: University of Illinois Press.
Grevisse, M. (1980). Le bon usage (11e édition). Paris: Duculot.
Gropen, J. et al. (1991). «Affectedness and Direct Objects: The Role of Lexical Semantics
in Acquisition of Verb Argument Structure». Cognition 41: 153-195.
Gruber, J. (1965). Studies on Lexical Relations. Doctoral dissertation. MIT, Cambridge,
MA.
Hale, K.; Keyser, S.J. (1993). «On Argument Structure and the Lexical Expression of
Syntactic Relatons». In Hale, K.; Keyser, S.J. (eds.). A View from Building 20:
Essays in Linguistics in Honor of Sylvain Bromberger. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press,
53-109.
— (1997). «The Limits of Argument Structure». In Mendikoetxea, A.; Uribe-Etxe-
barria, M. (eds.). Theoretical Issues at the Morphology-Syntax Interface. Supplements
of the International Journal of Basque Linguistics and Philology [XL]. Bizkaia:
Servicio Editorial de la UPV, 203-230.
— (1998). «The Basic Elements of Argument Structure». In Harley, H. (ed.). MIT
Working Papers in Linguistics 32. Papers from the UPenn/MIT Roundtable on
Argument Structure. Cambridge: MA, 73-118.
— (1999). «A Response to Fodor and Lepore, ‘Impossible Words?’». Linguistic Inquiry
30.3: 453-466.
Harley, H. (1995). Subjects, Events and Licensing. Doctoral dissertation. MIT,
Cambridge, MA.
Hoekstra, T. (1988). «Small Clause Results». Lingua 74: 101-139.
— (1992). «Aspect and Theta-theory». In Roca, I.M. (ed.). Thematic Structure: Its
Role in Grammar. Dordrecht: Linguistic Models, Foris, 145-174.
van Hout, A. (1996). Event Semantics of Verb Frame Alternation: A Case Study of
Dutch and Its Acquisition. Doctoral dissertation. Tilburg: TILDIL dissertation
series.
Jackendoff, R. (1983). Semantics and Cognition. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
— (1990). Semantic Structures. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Juffs, A. (1996). Learnability and the Lexicon. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
CatWPL 8 001-137 29/5/2001 17:30 Página 94

94 CatWPL 8, 2000 Jaume Mateu Fontanals

Kiparsky, P. (1997). «Remarks on Denominal Verbs». In Alsina, A. et al. (eds.). Complex

Predicates. Stanford, Clf.: CSLI.
Klipple, E. (1997). «Prepositions and Variation». In Di Sciullo, A-M. (ed.). Projections
and Interface Conditions. New York/Oxford: Oxford University Press, 74-108.
Kratzer, A. (1996). «Severing the External Argument from the Verb». In Rooryck, J.;
Zaring, L. (eds.). Phrase Structure and the Lexicon. Dordrecht: Kluwer.
Legendre, G. (1997). «Secondary Predication and Functional Projections in French».
Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 15: 43-87.
Levin, B.; Rapoport, T. (1988). «Lexical Subordination». CLS 24: 275-289.
Levin, B.; Rappaport Hovav, M. (1991). «Wiping the Slate Clean: A Lexical Semantic
Exploration». Cognition 41: 123-151.
— (1995). Unaccusativity. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
— (1996). «Lexical Semantics and Syntactic Structure». In Lappin, S. (ed.). The
Handbook of Contemporary Semantic Theory. Oxford/Malden: Blackwell,
487-507.
Mateu, J. (1999). «Universals of Semantic Construal for Lexical Syntactic Relations».
Paper presented at the 1999 GLOW Workshop on Sources of Universals, Potsdam.
Distributed as GGT-99-4 Research Report. Bellaterra: Universitat Autònoma de
Barcelona.
— (2000). «Syntactically-based Lexical Decomposition: the Case of Climb Revisited».
Paper presented at the Berkeley Linguistics Society, University of California at
Berkeley, Berkeley, CA. To appear in: Proceedings of BLS 26.
Mateu, J.; Amadas, L. (1999). «Lexical Subordination and Parametric Variation». Paper
presented at the 1999 Conference of the Texas Linguistics Society: Perspectives on
Argument Structure, 1999, Austin, Texas. To appear in Texas Linguistic Forum.
Mateu, J.; Rigau, G. (1999). «Universals of Lexico-syntactic Typology and Parametric
Variation». Paper presented at the 1999 GLOW on Universals, ZAS, Berlin.
— (2000). «A Minimalist Account of Conflation Processes: Parametric Variation at
the Lexicon-Syntax Interface». Distributed as GGT-00-1 Research Report. Bellaterra:
Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona.
Merlo, P. (1989). «Risultative in italiano e in inglese». Rivista di Grammatica Generativa
14: 29-53.
Morimoto, Y. (1998). Los verbos de movimiento en español: una aproximación léxico
conceptual. Doctoral dissertation. Madrid: Universidad Complutense de Madrid.
Napoli, D. (1992). «Secondary resultative predicates in Italian». Journal of Linguistics
28: 53-90.
Neeleman, A. (1994). Complex Predicates. OTS, Utrecht: OTS Dissertation Series
Utrecht.
Pinker, S. (1989). Learnability and Cognition: The Acquisition of Argument Structure.
Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Pustejovsky, J. (1991). «The Syntax of Event Structure». Cognition 41: 47-82.
Rapoport, T. (1993). «Verbs in Depictives and Resultatives». In Pustejovsky, J.
(ed.). Semantics and the Lexicon. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers,
163-189.
Snyder, W. (1995). «A Neo-Davidsonian Approach to Resultatives, Particles, and
Datives». NELS 25: 457-471.
CatWPL 8 001-137 29/5/2001 17:30 Página 95

A Lexical-Syntactic Approach to Resultative Constructions CatWPL 8, 2000 95

Talmy, L. (1985). «Lexicalization Patterns: Semantic Structures in Lexical Forms». In

Shoepen, T. (ed.). Language Typology and Syntactic Description III: Grammatical
Categories and the Lexicon. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 57-149.
— (1991). «Paths to Realization: A Typology of Event Integration». Buffalo Papers
in Linguistics 91-01: 147-187.
Tenny, C. (1994). Aspectual Roles and the Syntax-Semantics Interface. Dordrecht:
Kluwer.
Washio, R. (1997). «Resultatives, Compositionality and Language Variation». Journal
of East Asian Languages 6: 1-49.
Wunderlich, D. (1997). «Argument Extension by Lexical Adjunction». Journal of
Semantics 14: 95-142.