Transitives with inchoative semantics

Abstract

The paper investigates the semantics and event structure of change-of-state verbs that undergo the causative alternation – specifically, lexical causative verbs and their anticausative counterparts. Following some of the previous literature, we challenge the traditional decomposition of lexical causatives into a cause event plus a become event. Instead, we argue on the basis of new arguments that both transitive and intransitive verbs of change-of-state involve a single event yielding a result state. Through various tests, we demonstrate that this event-state relation is interpreted as become not only in intransitive anticausatives, but also in lexical causatives with a causer subject and in transitive anticausatives. Only when a lexical causative verb has an agent subject is this event-state relation interpreted as cause. We face, then, a syntax/semantics mismatch: except when an agent subject is present, change-of-state verbs in transitive sentences exhibit ‘intransitive’ (inchoative) semantics: they describe mere changes (become events), just as they do when they are used in intransitive, anticausative sentences. We argue that the distinction between agent and causer subjects is not based on animacy, but rather on the semantic type of the subject participant. Agent subjects (whether animate or inanimate) denote individuals participating in the vP-event (which is a cause event), whereas causer subjects denote eventualities or facts that bring about the vP-event (which is a become event). Our analysis is developed within the framework of Distributed Morphology, in which external arguments are introduced by a Voice projection that combines with the eventive vP, either Agent Voice or Causer Voice (or Expletive Voice present in transitive anticausatives, for which we provide an updated semantics). We treat these Voice heads as syncategorematic expressions, as opposed to categorematic expressions, as the choice of Voice head determines how the event-state relation in the vP is interpreted.