Light verbs

The position to which the subject moves is typically a nominative position and so we might assume that the movement has something to do with placing this argument in a Case position. The reason why these verbs are called ‘unaccusative’ is because unlike with transitive verbs, which share the possibility of having theme arguments, the theme of the unaccusative cannot normally remain inside the VP to receive accusative Case.

As far as the event structure is concerned, unaccusative verbs have a very simple interpretation involving a simple state or relationship between the theme argument and the location. To see this, compare the unaccusative and agentive use of sit again:

(23) a the water sat on the work surface b the old man sat (himself) on the chair

In (23a) the event expressed simply involves the relationship between the water and the work surface, i.e. that the water was on the work surface. In (23b) on the other hand, the event involves the old man doing something which results in him being situated on the chair. Thus the two can be analysed in the following way:

(24) a e = e1 : e1 = ‘the water was on the work surface’

b e = e1→ e2 : e1 = ‘the old man did something’

e2 = ‘the old man was on the chair’

The simple event structure corresponds with the simple VP structure of the unaccusative.

We will see that more complex event structures lead to more complex VPs.

argument structure as the main difference here is to do with the number of arguments.

The other examples in (25) demonstrate that the contribution of the light verb can affect aspect (do a dance verses dance) and duration (take a look verses look) of an event.

It seems that these verbs lie somewhere between thematic verbs with a full descriptive content and functional verbs which play no role in the thematic structure of the sentence. This is why they are called light verbs as they make a contribution to thematic and other aspects of semantic structure, though a ‘lighter’ one than fully thematic main verbs.

In the following cases, the light verbs take verbal complements, but function in a similar way to the above:

(27) a I made the glass shatter = I shattered the glass b they got the door shut = they shut the door c we let the water run = we ran the water

Again in these cases the light verbs do make a contribution to the meaning of the construction and so the sentences on either side of the equation are not identical.

Interestingly, there seems to be different degrees to which these verbs contribute a meaning, with make in (27a) contributing very little and let in (27c) far more.

Compare:

(28) a I made the door close b I let the door close

Only in (28a) could it be said that I closed the door, though in both cases I did something that resulted in the door becoming closed.

It has become standard in recent years to represent light verbs with a lower case ‘v’

rather than an upper case ‘V’, which is used for fully thematic verbs. We will adopt this practice here.

What is the structure of the VP containing a light verb? Let us concentrate on the cases in (27). In these we have the light verb itself with a subject to its left. To the right we appear to have a VP containing the main verb and its arguments. Suppose we assume that the main VP is a complement of the light verb. This would give us the structure:

(29) vP

DP v'

she v VP

made DP V'

the vase V

break

agent

theme

The thematic relationships are straightforward. In the lower VP we have a situation fairly similar to the VP in the previous section. The theme argument, the vase, is in the specifier of the VP as we discovered previously. The verb break therefore looks fairly similar to an unaccusative verb (we will investigate the properties of this type of verb more fully in the next section). The specifier of the vP is interpreted as an agent and therefore the light verb is clearly not unaccusative. This is not surprising as unaccusative verbs either have no complement or prepositional ones, and here the light verb has a VP complement. In terms of the UTAH, we might therefore propose that the agent -role is assigned to the specifier of a (light) verb which has a VP complement.

If we include this complex VP in a sentence, we note that it is the agent that moves to the clausal subject position and the theme appears to remain inside the VP:

(30) she₁ may have [_vP t₁ made [_VP the window open]]

As the theme does not move, we can conclude that it gets Case in its original position.

Interestingly, there is no Case assigned when there is no light verb forcing the theme to move out of the VP:

(31) the window1 could have [VP t1 opened]

This is identical to what happens with unaccusative verbs (compare (31) with (22)): the theme subject receives no Case in its original VP internal position and hence has to move to the nominative subject position. So how does the theme get Case in (30)? The obvious difference is the presence of the light verb and therefore we might assume that it is this verb that is responsible for assigning accusative Case to the theme:

(32) vP

DP v'

she v VP

made DP V'

the vase V

break

Consider the event structure expressed by this verbal complex. It is fairly clear that there is one (complex) event described by the light verb and thematic verb complex:

there is just one clause here with one subject. The event, however, is made up of two sub-events: she does something and this causes the vase to break:

(33) e = e1→ e2 : e1 = ‘she did something’

e2 = ‘the vase broke’

accusative

Note that the complex event structure is mirrored by the complex VP structure. There are two sub-events and two parts to the VP, an upper vP and a lower VP. Moreover, the vP corresponds to the first event and the causative connection between the sub-events. The VP corresponds to the sub-event that results from the first. This indicates that there is a connection between event structure and syntactic structure, specifically the more complex the event structure, the more complex the syntactic structure used to represent it.