- Where will they be located in a simple active clause?
- Where will they be located in general?
We take these questions up successively in the next four subsections.
5.9.1 Number of syntactic arguments
Recall that syntactic arguments are expressions of semantic arguments, and that a verb can either permit or require a
semantic argument to be expressed. Therefore the following generalization should obtain:
(41) The number of syntactic arguments that a verb takes on any given occasion is equal to or fewer than the
number of its semantic arguments.(41) isalmostcorrect. Theflavor of the exceptions is illustrated in (42).
(42) a.Betsy behaved/perjuredherself.
A better solution presenteditself.
Bill prideshimself onhis stamp collection.
b. The chair has a stain onit.
c. Sli mslepta deep sleep.
Kathy cougheda violent cough.In (42a), no direct object is possible other than a reflexive: *Betsy behaved/perjured Sam. Moreover,behavecan omit the
reflexive without a perceptible difference in meaning. This suggests that the reflexive is a supernumerary syntactic
argument. Verbs with such argument structure are rare in English but more common in Romance languages, where
they are used for instance as decausative versions of transitive verbs (43a), among other possibilities.
(43) (French)
a. Le vase s'est brisée.
the vaseself isbroken‘The vase broke.’
b. Marie s' en va.
Marieself fromthere goes‘Marie is going away.’
In (42b), the pronoun can be replaced only by expressions that denote a part of the chair, e.g.The chair has a hole in its/
the leg, but *The chair has a hole in the carpet; and the sentence can be paraphrased using two syntactic arguments rather
than three:On the chair is a stain; In the chair's leg is a hole. Hence this use ofhaveseems to have an extra syntactic
argument—perhaps the subject, since this is the argument absent from the paraphrase.
(42c) is the so-called“cognate object”construction. No direct object is possible other than one headed by the cognate
object, e.g. *Slim slept a long napis