The syntax of argument structure

Although current generative theory acknowledges the existence of argument structure (AS), it nevertheless con­­tinues to assume that syntax is the primary computational system, which explains why it has failed to pro­duce an integrated theory of morphosyntax. I define morphosyntax as the relation between the syntactically relevant infor­mation encoded in a verb’s AS, the affix-driven operations that alter initial AS representation, and the syntactic structure pro­jected from derived AS (see Babby 2009). In this paper I present an expli­cit de­ri­va­tion­al theory of the mapping between AS and syntax. My main hypothesis is that AS and the affix-driven operations that alter it play a central role in the sentence’s derivation and many of the derivational operations that were assumed in earlier theory to be syntactic are in fact AS-level operations that have predictable syntactic effects.