Advances in Role and Reference Grammar

A SYNOPSIS OF ROLE AND REFERENCE GRAMMAR 135

which cannot be linked to a single NP argument in the syntax. Hence, step
4b comes into play, which cancels the interpretation of the clock as the
undergoer of believe and links it to the unassociated undergoer argument of
clean, the argument that would be pivot of clean in a simple clause due to
its passive voice.
All of the syntactically intransitive "raising" verbs like seem, appear
and be likely are semantically «transitive ([—MR]); that is, none of their
arguments can have macrorole status. In English (but not in Icelandic, for
example), that means that none of them can be the pivot in the clause.
Since English requires that all clauses have "subjects", these verbs require
either a ί/ιαί-clause sentential subject (which is impossible with seem and
appear), a dummy it, or an argument from the embedded LS. Linking from
semantics to syntax is straightforward with these verbs. Since none of their
arguments can be a macrorole, none can fill the single syntactic function in
their core; hence it will be open. The linked core is missing its pivot func­
tion, and therefore in order to avoid a CC violation, the argument that
would otherwise be pivot of the linked core fills the open pivot function of
the matrix core, as in (119a). This is represented in Figure 47. When the

Figure 47