Unergative Adjectives and Psych Verbs

The idea that the verb phrase is a layered constituent has been around in the literature for some time, e. shell theory plays an important role as well. In this paper I will argue that a particular interpretation of shell theory may provide insight into long standing problems such as the nature of syntactic ergativity and the structure of psychological verbs. Let us consider a VP–structure with a V–type shell (the vP) on top of it. Given binary branching this structure is able to accomodate three argument phrases, in resp. the complement of V, the specifier of V, and the specifier of v. In Chomsky's words: The internal arguments occupy the positions of specifier and complement of V. Accordingly, the external argument cannot be lower than [Spec, v]. If it is [Spec, v], as I will assume, then the v–VP configuration can be taken to express the causative or agentive role of the external argument. It would be natural to extend the same reasoning to transitive verb constructions generally, assigning them a double–VP structure as in (115) [=(1) H.B.], the agent role being understood as the interpretation assigned to the v–VP configuration. A V–object construction is therefore maximal, not V'. [...] If intransitive (unergative) verbs are hidden transitives, as Hale and Keyser suggest, then only unaccusatives lacking agents would be simple VP structures. (1) vP Spec v' v VP Spec V' V Compl 1 I would like to thank Sjef Barbiers, Marcel den Dikken and the editors of this volume for their comments on an earlier version of this paper. It has been presented in Berlin (1998) and Leiden (1998). I thank the audiences for their remarks.