Chapter 5 - Verb Phrasesrole. As there is no such visible predicate which can do such things in (48b) our
conclusion is that this predicate is ‘invisible’.
But how can we even consider (50) as a possible analysis when it obviously gets
the word order wrong? The thing to remember is that what we are discussing here is
the organisation of the VP at D-structure and we know that things tend to move about
before we get to S-structure. Thus, if there is a plausible movement analysis which will
re-arrange things so that the right word order is achieved at S-structure, then this
objection will have been answered. The obvious way to achieve the correct word order
would be to have the verb move to the light verb position:
(51) vP
DP v'
Mike v VP
bounce 1 v DP V'
e the ball V
t 1
The analysis claims that the main verb moves to adjoin to the empty light verb. This is
a perfectly possible movement given what we know about other movements. The
movement is neither too far, violating bounding conditions, nor in violation of the
Projection principle by changing lexically stated information. The movement is also
structurally preserving in the way that adjunction is structurally preserving.
Of course, showing something to be a possible movement and showing it to be an
actual movement are two different things. In order to justify the movement analysis in
(51) we might consider a similar construction in Hungarian. Consider the following:
(52) a legurította a labdát
down-rolled-3.s the ball-acc
‘he rolled the ball down’
b a labda legurult
the ball down-rolled
(53) a építette a házat
built-3.s. the house
‘he built the house’
b a ház felépult
‘the house (became) built’