Part of
Phrasal and Clausal Architecture: Syntactic derivation and interpretationEdited by Simin Karimi, Vida Samiian and Wendy K. Wilkins
[Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today 101] 2007
► pp. 396–411
In this paper, I discuss “quasi-argument” thematic roles (Instrument, Benefactive and certain Locations), and argue on the basis of their reconstruction properties and their dependence on event-related features that we should analyze them as generated in the event-related functional projections for VP, rather than in VP itself. This supports an approach to thematic roles as defined relative to syntactic relations, since I argue that the roles in question are not definable in relation to lexically specified verbal predicates.