Problems of classifying small-clause patterns

Chapter 4.1.4 has illustrated the difficulties descriptive grammarians have in coming to grips with the different semantic relationships underlying consider-type sentences, depictive struc-tures and resultative patterns. Such semantic questions are given a wide berth by most genera-tive grammarians as well, and like in descripgenera-tive grammars, most of the generagenera-tive debates on depictive and resultative structures are posed in terms of a rather fruitless complement/adjunct distinction.

SC-theoreticians have positioned themselves at two different points in this debate. Like Jespersen in his theory of dependent-nexus structures, Hoekstra (1988; 1992) and Kayne (1985: 121-2) do not make a distinction between SCs selected by consider, paint or eat; in all three of these patterns, they argue, the matrix verb subcategorises for the whole SC and not a direct-object NP2:

(135) a. John considers [SC Mary intelligent].

b. John painted [SC the door red].

c. John ate [SC the meat hot].

Like descriptive grammarians, Hoekstra and Kayne are confronted with the problem that the

XPs in (135b) and (135c) are not obligatory elements in the structure (cf. John painted the

93 The PRO-hypothesis is, incidentally, not as new as it seems; it has already been put forward and rejected by Chomsky (1981: 109).

door; John ate the meat). Hoekstra maintains that "the implications ... that e.g. the door is painted ... result from what I call a shadow interpretation" (1988: 117); in other words, a verb such as paint can either select a direct object NP₂ or an SC-argument, and the two expressions are not reducible to one another. When the verb subcategorises for a subject/predicate rela-tionship, "the SC denotes a state of affairs which is presented as a consequence of the activity or process denoted by the verb" (Hoekstra 1988: 121). According to this reasoning, the main verb does not assign a θ-role to NP2, but some kind of 'resultant-event' or 'concomitant-event' θ-role to the whole NP2 XP-string. What is frequently adduced as evidence in favour of the analysis of (135) is the existence of resultative sentences such as The joggers ran the pave-ment thin or He laughed himself silly, where the NP2 cannot be a direct-object argument of the main verb in isolation (*The joggers ran the pavement; *He laughed himself) (Hoekstra 1988:

116-7, 1992: 150-1; Staudinger 1996: 180-1; Wilder 1994: 222).⁹⁴

The main problem with what Carrier and Randall have dubbed the "binary SC-analysis"

of sentences (135b, c) (1992: 175) is overgeneration. If SCs can denote states of affairs that result from the verb's action or are concomitant with the event denoted by the verb, it is not clear why some SC-complements are permissible while others are not:

(136) a. *John painted [SC the door sticky]. (ROS: 73) b. *John ate [SC the meat delicious]. (ROS: 100)

Similarly, this analysis forces us to allow complement clauses for verbs that have traditionally been analysed as intransitive (laugh [SC oneself silly]) or transitive requiring an object NP

(drink [SC the tea hot]) as well (Rivière 1982: 686), without, however, proposing a convincing semantic relation between the main-verb event and the SC-event. Some rather technical solu-tions have been put forward to tackle these problems. For resultative sentences, Hoekstra pro-poses that the final temporal slice tn of the main-verb event can be identified with the resulta-tive event by θ-marking; while an inherently bounded event such as that denoted by kill θ-marks tn itself, tn is not θ-marked by an unbounded activity verb like drink. Here tn may be θ-marked by being bound to an SC-event that denotes a state of affairs holding at the end of the drinking event (e.g. John drank [SC himself stupid]) (Guéron and Hoekstra 1995:101; Hoek-stra 1992: 161-2). HoekHoek-stra expands on his account by suggesting that NP-objects in sentences such as John ate the cake are also SCs underlyingly ('John ate the cake, with the result that the cake was gone at the end of the event'), which bind tn of the matrix clause (1992: 163). If this

94 While the transitive verb paint can be taken to assign Case to the subject of the SC in John painted [the door red], things are little bit more complicated with intransitive verbs. It must be assumed that an intransitive verb such as run potentially has the ability to Case-mark a postverbal ^NP, even if this ^NP can never be its thematic argument (Rothstein 1992: 127).

proposal can add weight to the binary SC-hypothesis is questionable, however: to classify a verbal event as inherently bounded or unbounded is a very tricky and often impossible busi-ness (see 9.2.1); moreover, it is not clear how an inherently unbounded predicate can have a final temporal slice at all (Goldberg 1995: 157).

The binary SC-hypothesis for resultative and depictive sentences is unimplementable for other reasons as well. A matrix verb such as paint assigns the same θ-role to a postverbal NP

no matter if an XP is present or not. As Carrier and Randall have shown, the sentence *The bears frightened the campground empty is ungrammatical because the NP2 the campground goes against the selectional restrictions imposed by the main verb (1992: 187-8). Even in a sentence such as John drank himself into a stupor, it is not clear that the main verb does not subcategorise for the NP2 himself. As Bowers has observed, the parallel sentence *Mary drank Bill into a stupor is ungrammatical, suggesting that the main verb imposes restrictions on the postverbal NP; under the binary SC-account, the main verb would subcategorise for the sub-ject of a complement clause, an otherwise unattested fact (1993: 621-2). Furthermore, if a verb assigns a resultative or concomitant θ-role, there is no way of combining the meanings of the main and small clauses: why does John painted the door red by necessity imply 'John painted the door, and the door became red as a result' and does not mean 'John was involved in the activity of painting (something), thereby causing, among other things, the door to be-come red' as the binary-SC analysis would suggest?

The binary SC-hypothesis is not the dominant mode of thinking on resultative and depic-tive patterns, though. Most SC-theoreticians do not provide a uniform analysis for all predica-tive NP₂ XP-strings. They argue that since the sentences John painted the door red and John ate the meat hot entail 'John painted the door' and 'John ate the meat', respectively, the post-verbal NPs should be analysed as direct objects (Aarts 1992: 48-9; Rothstein 1995: 31). Still, Aarts does not wish to revert to a descriptive analysis where NP₂ is a direct object and XP is an additional complement or adjunct because this could not explain the subject/predicate rela-tionship between the postverbal phrases the door and red or the meat and hot. Instead, he pro-pounds a modified SC-analysis for resultative and depictive verbs:

(137) [VP [VPV NP_i] [SC PROiXP]] (from Aarts 1992: 67)

In this representation, the NP adjacent to V is assigned a θ-role by the matrix verb and is there-fore its direct object. The SC is not an argument of the verb, but an adjunct of the minimal VP, creating another VP-segment. The subject of the SC contains the empty pronominal anaphor PRO, which is co-indexed with the direct object and consequently controlled by it (Aarts

1992: 67, 1997: 336; Chomsky 1981: 110-1).⁹⁵ On the basis of this analysis, the door in (135b) would be the direct-object argument of paint and the VP painted the door would be modified by an adjunct SC, the subject of which is co-referential with the door and the predi-cate of which is red. The representation of (137) strictly observes the Theta-Criterion: the direct object does not receive two θ-roles, one from the main verb and one from the predicate, but is assigned its unique θ-role by the main verb; the subject θ-role of the SC-predicate is assigned to PRO. The co-indexing mechanism guarantees that the direct-object NP

and PRO have the same referent. With regard to special cases such as John walked his shoes threadbare, proponents of the control analysis are more conservative and suggest a binary structure, with the main verb walked selecting for the SC his shoes threadbare; a control-structure seems to be excluded because the postverbal NP is not semantically selected by the matrix verb (Carrier and Randall 1992: 210; Levin and Rappaport-Hovav 2001: 769; Roth-stein 1992: 127; Staudinger 1996: 179). On the model of the traditional analysis of control and ECM-infinitives (I persuaded himi [PROi to go] vs. I expect [him to come]), Wechsler draws a distinction between 'control resultatives', where NP2 is a direct object and controls the PRO-subject of the SC, and 'ECM resultatives', where NP2 is not a direct object of the main verb but exclusively the subject of the SC (1997: 309).⁹⁶ Like the binary SC-hypothesis, the ECM-analysis cannot explain the link between the main-clause event and the SC-event, though.

The adjunct analysis of control-SCs runs headlong into the same obstacles as the adjunct analysis offered in descriptive accounts. If XP is not selected by the verb, it is difficult to ac-count for constraints such as *The waitress wiped the table stained (Carrier and Randall 1992:

183-4). There are only two conceivable solutions to this dilemma: one is to uphold the adjunct analysis and to appeal to some vague "extra-grammatical principles" filtering out

95 The PRO-theorem requires PRO to appear in an ungoverned position; PRO is thus in complementary distribu-tion with overt NPs that must appear in positions governed by a Case-assigner (Stowell 1983: 287). More recent theories argue that PRO must also be Case-marked so that it can become visible for theta-assignment (Haegeman and Guéron 1999: 505; Martin 2002: 144). In order to account for the complementary distribution of PRO and

NPs in this revised version of Case, generative grammarians speculate that PRO is assigned minimal or null Case, which is not sufficient for overt NPs (Cook and Newson 1996: 337; Haegeman and Guéron 1999: 403). Minimal Case can be assigned by non-finite I; if SCs are taken to contain a non-finite I-system, PRO can be argued to receive minimal Case in (137).

96 The distinction of ECM-resultatives and control-resultatives has led to some technical problems, though. In order for the subject NP of the ECM-resultative The joggers ran their shoes threadbare to receive Case, it must be exceptionally governed by the matrix verb, and in order to be governed by the matrix verb, the SC [their shoes threadbare] must be a θ-marked complement of ran (Carrier and Randall 1992: 210-1). The PRO-subject of a control-resultative such as John painted the doori PROi red or John ate the meati PROi raw, on the other hand, must be ungoverned, i.e. the SCs [PRO red] and [PRO raw] must be adjuncts of VP (Aarts 1992: 50;

Staudinger 1996: 217; Stowell 1983: 305). The semantically unconvincing conclusion that ECM-resultatives are complements and control-resultatives are adjuncts therefore throws a wrench into this proposal.

matical sentences (Aarts 1992: 62) — as Aart's review of the largely unsuccessful attempts to formulate such general semantic or pragmatic constraints shows, however, these restrictions would be of a highly volatile nature (1992: 59-63). The other alternative is to argue that at least resultative constructions require a complement SC (Stowell 1983: 306)⁹⁷; such a com-plement-proposal for resultatives is put forward by some descriptive grammarians as well. To say that depictive XPs are adjuncts is too simplistic as well, though: the adjunct-complement problem is thrown into particular relief by sentences such as I described Mary as an intelli-gent woman: Aarts thinks that the NP2 is a direct object here (cf. I described Mary), but the putative SC [PROi as an intelligent woman] does not seem to be an adjunct as in eat-type sen-tences, but a second postverbal complement because it seems to be semantically selected by the main verb described (Aarts 1992: 116-8, 1995: 81; similarly, Napoli 1989: 122).⁹⁸ The complement criteria 'obligatoriness' and 'semantic selection' are opportunistically torn apart here as in comparable suggestions in descriptive grammar (for a non-discrete analysis of sen-tences with describe-type verbs, see 11.2.4).

History repeats itself in various guises: the SC-theoreticians who have rebuffed descrip-tive analyses for their many inconsistencies become entangled in exactly the same comple-ment/adjunct debate as the one depicted for descriptive grammars in 4.1.4. This is not surpris-ing because discrete notions such as 'complement' or 'adjunct' are bound to be stumblsurpris-ing blocks for any syntactic framework:

The distinction between complements and adjuncts is a highly vexed distinction, for several reasons, one of which is that no diagnostic criteria have emerged that will reliably distinguish adjuncts from complements in all cases — too many examples seem to "fall into the crack" be-tween the two categories, no matter how theorists wrestle with them. (Dowty 2000: 53)

What is even more difficult to tolerate than the problems of definition is that the comple-ment/adjunct distinction does not contribute very much to elucidating the reasons for the se-mantic differences between the secondary-predicate constructions of (135).

The present chapter has amply illustrated that SC-theory is not primarily based on empirical, but theoretical arguments: "[P]ublications on SCs tend to focus very heavily upon theory-internal assumptions ..., with invented sentences used as vehicles for highly abstract

97 Stowell opts for a solution where NP2is a direct-object argument and [PRO ^XP] a second subcategorized post-verbal argument. He then has to provide some means to guarantee that PRO can be ungoverned in a subcatego-rized position (1983: 306-7). Confronted with the same problem, Hornstein and Lightfoot have proposed that PRO may be governed in some environments (1987: 26), a suggestion that has not caught on, however.

98 Aarts attempts to protect the PRO-subject in the SC-complement from being governed by the matrix verb by suggesting that the SC is a CP and thus opaque to outside government here, while other SCs are IPs and thus transparent to outside government (1992: 117-8). A distinction between ^IP-SCs and ^CP-SCs is purely stipulative, though, and has become irrelevant in the CP-stage of SC-theory.

erations" (Schneider 1997: 36). None of the constituency and subjecthood-tests suggested by adherents of SCs stands up to closer empirical scrutiny (even if special rules can always be invoked to patch things up in generative accounts), and the attempts to integrate SCs into the framework of generative grammar are predominantly propelled by the necessity to satisfy theoretical principles such as the Theta-Criterion, the Projection Principle, and the binary-branching requirement. As the gamut of views on the categorial status of SCs shows, NP2 XP -strings can only be specified as clauses if their underlying structure is taken to differ substan-tially from their surface appearance — which also implies that such proposals are difficult, if not impossible, to test empirically. Similarly, the empirically observed non-constituency be-haviour of the NP2 XP-string and the direct-object characteristics of NP2 can only be accounted for if they are explained away opportunistically as surface-structure reflexes of theoretical principles such as Case Theory.

Constructs with such tenuous claims to reality as SCs should be excised from the gram-mar. I therefore fully agree with Pullum, who claims that "if you believe in small clauses, you probably eat steak with a spoon" (1986: 411).

6. Challenging complex-predicate analyses of secondary-predicate