The Theta System: Syntactic Realization of Verbal Concepts

Experiencing Derivations

“…Let me summarize how it is captured in the present system. (The mapping view I outline below departs quite radically from my earlier assumptions in Reinhart (2000). It is presented with more detail in Reinhart (2001).)…”

“…by Pesetsky (1995), that (15) too is unaccusative, namely its subject originates internally. But in Reinhart (2000), I argue in some detail that this cannot be the case.) This difference brings us to the issue of mapping (or linking) from the information in the lexicon to syntactic derivations -the order of merging of the verb's arguments.…”

“…The analysis is based on the a-system proposed in Reinhart (2000). I survey here only the properties of the system relevant for the present discussion.…”

“…Although our focus here is on the formal properties of the feature clusters, they obviously also play a role in the interpretation. In Reinhart (2000) I argue that what they code are basic causal relations expressed by the verb concept. Following Shen's (1985) study of the perception of causality, I suggested that a /+c feature is associated with a participant (role) perceived as EXPERIENCING DERIVATIONS forming a sufficient, and not just a necessary, condition for the event.…”

Agreement in Italian Impersonal Si Constructions: A Derivational Analysis

“…In this paper, I argue that si is not a special lexical item that absorbs a Theta-role or Case (contra Cinque 1988, Reinhart and Siloni 1999, Reinhart 2000pro Dobrovie-Sorin 1998. I show that si does not have any special property, except the one deriving from its clitic nature.…”