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Theories of the resultative construction abound in modern theoretical syntax (Carrier and Randall, 1992; Den Dikken and Hoekstra, 1993; Fontanals, 2000, 2001; Mueller, 2001; Rappaport and Levin, 2001; Harley, 2002; Jackendoff, 2002; Neeleman and van der Koot, 2002; Mezhevich, 2002; Goldberg and Jackendoff, 2004; McIntyre, 2004). However, each of the proposed models requires its own theory of argument structure and of the syntax-semantics interface, and picking the most theoretically viable one is therefore no easy task. Furthermore, the empirical data on which most models are built is highly skewed towards the Germanic languages, despite the fact that resultative-like constructions appear in many of the world’s languages (Mendivil, 2000). In my presentation I will outline a few of the features of the resultative construction in English (case marking of unselected objects, telicity, restrictions on verbal and result phrase semantics, fixed constituent order) and compare these with features of resultatives in other languages and features of languages without a resultative construction, with a view to building a truly cross-linguistically and theoretically viable model of resultatives. |
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