Advances in Role and Reference Grammar

ATTRIBUTIVES AND IDENTIFICATIONALS 445

an activity predicate in the lexical semantics of the verb. Languages select
subjects/pragmatic pivots^11 from those arguments linked to macroroles; no
other NPs can function as subjects/pragmatic pivots.
In Van Valin (1991), the relation between thematic relations and mac­
roroles is elaborated to account for quirky case in Icelandic. A crucial
assumption made in the analysis of Icelandic is that a predicate may have
fewer macroroles than it has direct core arguments. This, then, is both a
more general and a more explicit version of my claim in section 2.1 that
attributive and identificational constructions have two thematic roles but
may have only one syntactic argument position. However, the alternative
statements do not have the same implications, as will be seen in section 4.4.
In the meantime, the assumption that a predicate may have fewer mac­
roroles than core arguments will be used in the analysis of auxiliary selec­
tion in Italian which follows.

3. An analysis of Italian attributive and identificational constructions

3.1 An RRG analysis of split intransitivity in Italian

While most accounts of Italian auxiliary selection which distinguish subjec­

tive and objective predicates have done so by attempting to identify the

conditions under which the auxiliary essere is selected (e.g. Rosen 1984,

Burzio 1986), a notable exception is Centineo (1986), where the principles

of auxiliary selection are stated in terms of markedness of pivot relative to

the actor choice on the Actor-Undergoer Hierarchy. Her account can be

summarized as in (29) (Centineo 1986, p. 31, Table 4).

(29) avere: transitive accomplishments

transitive activities

transitive achivements

transitive states

intransitive activities

essere: transitive reflexives

benefactive reflexives

intransitive accomplishments

intransitive achievements

intransitive states

passives