Thematic Dependencies Between External and Internal Arguments of Transitives Niina

This paper argues that transitive verbs can have non-agent external arguments and nonpatient internal arguments, at least in Chinese. However the apparent free thematic mapping is subject to the following generalizations: there is neither agent internal argument nor patient external argument, and if an external argument is not an agent, the internal argument must be patient, whereas if an internal argument is not a patient, the external one must be agent. The generalizations can be accounted for by the claims that v is [-patient] and V is [-agent], that the default feature of v and V are agent and patient respectively, and that a non-default thematic feature must be checked/valued by a default one. The conclusions of this study imply that like other formal features, thematic relations have checking/valuation involved, and that v is not specified in UG to be related to agent and causer only.