Basic English Grammar with Exercises

Exercise 4

c) The sentence David rolled the ball to the wall is similar in its structure to that
in (b), but here we find no overt light verb in the v head position. Actually, the v head
is occupied by an abstract light verb represented by e in the structure below. The
arguments are the same and Case is assigned to them the same way as described
above. The main difference is that the abstract light verb is a bound morpheme, which
requires the main verb to move to the v position. The verb roll then moves on to the
tense vP and I picking up the tense and agreement morphemes.

(3) CP

C'

C IP

DP 2 I'

David I vP

roll 1 +ed 3 v'

v vP

t 1 +t 3 t 2 v'

v VP

t 1 DP V'

the ball V PP

t 1 to the wall