Basic English Grammar with Exercises

Exercise 4

Exercise 4

a) In the sentence John’s message arrived the verb arrive is an unaccusative

verb, which takes only one argument, assigning a theme thematic role to it. The

argument is in the specifier position of the VP in the D-structure. Since DPs need

Case, it has to move to the specifier of the IP, where it gets nominative Case from the

finite I head. The higher vP in the structure hosts the tense morpheme -ed, which the

lexical verb picks up on its way to I.

(1) CP

C'

C IP

DP 1 I'

John’s message I vP

arrive 2 +ed 3 v'

v VP

t 2 +t 3 t 1 V'

V

t 2