attempting to reverse their order in (33) or (35). The consensus in thefield is that the order is determined by the
thematic roles of the corresponding semantic arguments (Anderson 1977; Bresnan and Kanerva 1989; Grimshaw
1990; Dowty 1991; Van Valin and LaPolla 1997; Jackendoff 1990a). All accounts agree that if one argument is an
Agent(anindividual that bringsabout an action),itcomesfirst. Moregenerally, theorder tends toworkoutsomething
like (50) (with some disagreement among different accounts). This does not account for all the cases in
(33)–(35)—partly because the semantic roles with verbs likelast, cost,andmeanare not well understood—but it covers
most of them.
(50) Linking Hierarchy for NP arguments
Agent > Recipient(e.g. indirectobject ofgive, send, etc.)> Theme (entityundergoing change or being located)
> Location (e.g. object of enter,leave, surround) > Predicate NPPrinciple (50) is neither purely syntactic nor purely semantic: it is an interface constraint that matches semantic roles
with syntactic position.^73
With these constraints in place, it becomes possible to specify the argument structure of verbs rather simply: in most
cases it is necessary only to list the semantic arguments and whether they are obligatorily or optionally expressed as
syntactic arguments. For instance,devourandeatcan be differentiated as in (51); the subscriptobldesignates obligatory
expression, and its absence designates optional expression. (See Jackendoff 1990a: ch. II for a fuller development of
this notation and Jackendoff 1993 for an emendation.)
THE PARALLEL ARCHITECTURE 143
(^73) This approach also accounts for the order of arguments in the Dative alternation. When the Recipientis expressed as a PP, i.e. a to-phrase, it necessarily follows the direct
objectbecauseof (47). Whenit is expressed by an NP, it necessarilyprecedes thedirectobject, whichhas thethematic role Theme, because of (50).Although something like
(50) is the predominant linking hierarchy in English, there are other linking hierarchies, based on animacy and focus information, that are more prominent in other
languages. See Aissen (1999).