Book
The Event Argument and the Semantics of Verbs
(2002)
Abstract
This is a book manuscript. I still have an MIT Press contract for the book. It was never completed, and probably never will be. Following up on my article 'Severing the External Argument from its Verb', the manuscript continues a constructivist agenda, arguing that some of the argument structure of a verb is built in the syntax. The manuscript primarily deals with Davidsonian and neo-Davidsonian argument association and with verbal cumulativity. A lot of interesting work on argument structure and events has come out in the meantime, and I myself have moved on to other things. Some of the material that was to be part of this book has been published separately: My work on voice, verbal plurality, stativity, resultatives, and telicity. A major chunk of the book was to be about voice alternations, taking off from 'Severing the External Argument'. In fact, the manuscript was circulated for a while with the title 'The Event Argument and the Semantics of Voice'. The idea was that voice alternations all fall within an expected range of variation relating to the status of the verb's external argument. Only the work on adjectival passives was completed. It was published independently as 'Building Statives'.
Keywords
- Event Semantics,
- Verb Semantics,
- Argument Structure,
- Passives,
- Voice Alternations,
- Plurality,
- Thematic Roles,
- Lexical Semantics,
- Semantic Atoms
Disciplines
Publication Date
2002
Publisher
Manuscript, University of Massachusetts at Amherst
Citation Information
Angelika Kratzer (2002): The Event Argument and the Semantics of Verbs. Unpublished manuscript. University of Massachusetts at Amherst.