Basic English Grammar with Exercises

Exercise 2

Multiple complement verbs:
More than two (usually three) arguments
Dative alternation possible
Locative structure

Based on these features and distributional criteria, subcategories of verbs can be
determined and their syntactic structure can be also provided.
Since the exercise focuses only on the subcategorisation frames of the verbs they
appear in an uninflected form in the trees.

a A face appeared behind the window.

theme argument

There appeared a face behind the window.

Behind the window a face appeared.

Behind the window there appeared a face.

 unaccusative

VP

DP V'

a face V PP

appear behind the window

b Susan sang.

agent argument

Susan sang a song.

 intransitive

vP

DP v'

Susan v VP

sing 1 v V'

e V

t 1