Janet Randall
Northeastern University
The Theta Criterion (beginning with Chomsky 1981) requires a one-to-one mapping of semantic arguments to syntactic positions.
But mismatches in both directions need to be explained. Verbs with implicit locations (the librarian shelved the books) and
implicit themes (they already ate) leave a semantic argument unprojected; intransitive resultatives (The joggers ran their
Nikes threadbare) project a syntactic element (their Nikes) that is not an argument of the verb. A solution to these puzzles
lies in a new approach to argument linking, the Isomorphic Linking Hypothesis, which claims that syntactic argument structure
is strictly determined by lexical argument geometry: relationships between linking arguments in the lexicon must be reflected
isomorphically in the syntax. After reviewing drawbacks of earlier linking theories, I will show how the Isomorphic Linking
Hypothesis -- together with a new approach to how lexical meanings "fuse" into larger meaning units -- can explain the linking
patterns of a wide range of verbs, solve the mismatch problem, and along the way, challenge some classic assumptions about
arguments, adjuncts, and the representations of verbs across the lexicon.
Reception to follow in 1413 Marie Mount Hall.