Advances in Role and Reference Grammar

(^408) MARY L. NUNES
(47) a. The city was destroyed by the enemy. (ACM V)
b. the city's destruction by the enemy
c. the destruction of the city by the enemy
(48) a. The contents were agitated by the cement mixer. (ACM V)
b. the contents' agitation by the cement mixer
 the agitation of the contents by the cement mixer
(49) a. Sara was amused at/by the cowboy. (Emotive 2 ACM V)
b. Sara's amusement at/by the cowboy (experiential state)
c. the amusement of Sara at/by the cowboy (experiential state)
(50) a. The ring was inherited by Jess. (ACH V)
b. the inheritance of the ring by Jess
(51) a. The senator was loved by his constituents. (STA V)
b. the love of the senator *by his constituents (experiential state)
Where prepositions do not mark arguments occurring post-verbally in
the clause, lexically-idiosyncratic marking is in some cases provided in the
vNP. This was exemplified earlier in the cases of entry/entrance and investi­
gation when into marks the y argument, and in the case of attack when on
marks the y argument. Although such marking is generally item specific,
the state-class data revealed that prepositional marking is sometimes made
available to groups of vN arguments (e.g. for with the y arguments of rever­
ence subclass members). Where neither the clause nor the lexicon provides
prepositional marking, however, the inability of nonprepositionally-marked
NPs to occur postnominally dictates that NP arguments included in the LS
of the V/vN and not linked to the vN's direct argument position cannot
occur postnominally in the vNP.
2.3.4 The nominal's LDP NP
It is important to recall from earlier discussions (cf. 2.2.3, 2.2.4) that since
RRG does not impose GRs on the NP, the nominal's LDP NP bears no
GR. Rather, its function is that of a topic. Furthermore, in not making the
double genitive assumption, the theory does not, as do the configurational
and LFG approaches, presuppose the presence of a prenominal NP. The
issue of argument "preposing," then, involves not only NPs which in the
clause occur as "direct objects," but NPs which occur as clausal "subjects,"
as well. In RRG, however, the issue of preposing is related to semantic (not
grammatical) relations. As Anderson's (1979) reliance on an affectedness