Towards A Semantic Analysis of Argument/Oblique Alternations in HPSG

This is part of a larger study based on a theory of thematic roles as sets of entailments, following primarily Dowty (1991). I use the term “entailment” in the sense of Dowty’s (1989) “lexical entailments”, i.e. properties a verb ascribes to an argument due to its role in the event, ignoring their ontological status as e.g. entailments vs. implicatures. See Beavers (to appear) for more details on the English data motivating this analysis and previous literature on the semantic basis of alternations. Thus they are underspecified for holistic affectedness (i.e. they neither entail nor contradict it). Other properties, however, are invariant, e.g. one participant is always a location, the other a locatum, and both are always at least partially affected (loaded/moved). Other realization patterns that are morphosyntactically similar to (1) involve related but distinct differences in interpretation, as in (4).