Earticle

The purpose of this paper is to provide a proper explanation to the collocational dependency between resultative phrases and verbs of resultative sentences. Resultative sentences describe the state of an internal argument referent resulting from the action denoted by the verb. The analysis of resultative sentences in this paper are based on Goldberg’s constructional view. Under the constructional view, resultative sentences are assumed to be composed of verbal subevent and constructional subevent. The verbal subevent and constructional subevent must be intergrated via causal relationship. I suggest two types of resultatives according to the causative meaning that resultatives have: lexical causative resultatives (LCR) which have the causative meaning from an inherent lexical verb and constructional causative resultatives (CCR) which get the causative meaning from constructional subevent. The CCR is analyzed as having a constructional subevent and a verbal subevent. The LCR, on the other hand, is understood as having a constructional subevent only. The CCR shows more restricted collocation dependency between verbs and resultative phrases than the LCR. I propose that the CCR must satisfy a causal relationship constraint in the cause and result relationship between constructional subevent and verbal subevent, whereas the LCR is free from the causal relationship constraint because the LCR is assumed to have only constructional subevent.

As noted by Simpson (1983), a resultative predicate can only be predicated of the underlying object. Levin and Rappaport Hovav (1995) generalized it as the Direct Object Restriction (DOR). Recently, Wechsler (1997, 2001) argues that the DOR is factually incorrect by citing some counter-examples to the DOR, and that this phenomenon turns out to be purely semantic after all. Despite Wechsler’s (1997, 2001) claims to the contrary, this paper aims to show the validity of syntactic approach to the DOR effects. Particularly, this paper concentrates on showing that Wechsler’s (1997, 2001) counter-examples are correctly explained under the DOR without relying on his semantic constraints. Rather, this paper argues that the DOR effects can be captured by proposing a proper syntactic structure. This paper proposes that a resultative is formed by a verb’s taking of a resultative SC complement, which is composed of a resultative predicate and its semantic subject DP. This proposal is based on another proposal that, in a resultative, the postverbal DP is a derived object just like an ECM object, and it is derived by movement from the resultative SC complement to the Spec of VP.

Tenny(1987, 1994) argues that it is aspectual component of thematic roles that governs their linking to syntax. That is, only aspectual structure is visible to syntax so that syntax needs to see not the thematic roles but the aspectual structure only. Tenny(1987) proposes 'The Aspectual Interface Hypothesis' saying that 'the universal principles of mapping between thematic structure and syntactic argument structure are governed by aspectual properties relating to measuring-out'. For measuring events, Tenny(1987, 1994) suggests that the internal direct argument be a measurer delimiting events, whereas Wyngaerd(2001) insists that resultative phrases delimit events. In this paper, I assume that all the resultative phrases have an aspectual role, and suggest the constraint on resultatives: resultative phrases have an aspectual role TERMINUS. With this constraint, I expect to constrain the possible resultative phrases and also substitute another constraint on resultatives such as Further Specification Constraint. I also suggest that the verbs of resultative construction have an aspectual structure [MEASURE, TERMINUS] or [PATH, TERMINUS]. In a sentence Kim ran into the room, for example, the scale for measuring out would be the path into the room. This exactly means that the measurer of the event described by the verb run is the implicit path and explicit terminus. Thus, I conclude that the measurer of events is the resultative small clauses rather than direct internal arguments or resultative phrases.

Transitive and unergative resultative predicates in Korean are nonfinite CP structures which might contain a null little pro, whereas the resultative phrases in unaccusative resultatives are adverbs. They all adjoined to VP. The subject of an infinitive in English cannot usually be an overt NP, so PRO has often been taken to be in complementary distribution with overt pronouns. The most relevant kind of example of a deficient/weak pronoun for the null subject of the transitive/unergative resultative in Korean is a little pro. Notice that pro can be replaced as an overt inalienable possession, which means that the latter is a deficient constituent. The weaker the pronoun is, the more likely it is to be null. In this vein, the deficient/weak pronoun must be picked over strong pronouns such as the overt pronoun when there is a choice between the two (Satık 2022b). This is captured via Cardinaletti and Starke’s(1999) economy constraint to minimize syntactic structure. The transitive verbs such as twutulita ‘hammer’ and talita ‘iron’ do not imply any change of state or any result. Nevertheless the sentences certainly imply some result when napcakhakey ‘flat’ and ppasppashakey ‘stiff’ appear as their respective transitive predicate. To reiterate, such resultatives are path and telicity related constructions with pro.

This paper discusses the significance of detailed grammatical explanations of language construction in teaching. Since recent trends in language teaching incline to the oral approach, learners tend to misunderstand the necessity of learning grammar. To acquire practical language use, however, requires grammatical knowledge of constructions which are employed in the target language. As is pointed out by O’Dowd (1998), there is a gap between linguistic theory and language teaching. A great deal of linguistic theories which could be useful in language teaching are not well known in general. By taking up the secondary predicate construction, which is often discussed in the linguistics world but is poorly focused on in language teaching, I argue that learners should not just memorize a number of idiomatic expressions with a particular construction, but should be given a grammatical or even theoretical explanation of the structure. Learning by rote has limitations as a learning method. To facilitate both comprehension and retention, I suggest using TV drama as an audiovisual aide since these programs contain a wide variety of naturalistic examples.