(22) we're twisting the night away.
Hank drank the whole afternoon away.
Kathy happily knitted two hours away.Here the verb is followed by a noun phrase that expresses a time period, plus the particleaway. Clearly a time period is
not a normal semantic argument for the verbs in (22)—one cannot twist the night, drink the afternoon(except perhaps
metaphorically), or knit two hours(except in the different senseknit for two hours). As in the previous cases, the verb
cannottake an objectofitsown: drink beer the whole afternoon away, *knit a sweater two hours away. Thereasonisthat direct
object position is occupied by the time period.
The meaning of the construction is roughly‘spend time period doing V’. By now the scenario is familiar: the best
account is not to say that the verb takes the object and the particle as free variables. Rather, the construction is a VP
that takes the verb and the NP as arguments, with the NP expressing a semantic argument of the type‘time period.’
Thus thisis another violationof theHead Constraint.The only phonologicallyspecified part of theconstruction is the
particleaway, which corresponds to a syntactic argument but not a semantic argument.
(23) [VPv np PRT]: V NP[time period] away,‘spend N PV-ing’Again there are specialized cases that use this frame:while NP[time] awayandfritter NP awaybothhave verbs that occur
only in this construction (thoughfritterpermits a wider range of NPs than just time periods).
At this point we have seen nearly every possible combination of specified constituents and free variables in structure
(16). One might wonder whether there is also a situation in which the structure is composed entirely of free variables.
This appears to be an appropriate solution for the well-known resultative construction, illustrated in (24).
(24) Wilma watered the tulipsflat.
Clyde cooked the pot black.
Drive your engine clean. [ad for gasoline]The verbwaterhas a semantic argument expressed as a direct object: the thing on which water is sprinkled. But the
further result, the tulips acquiring some property (besides becoming wet), is not part of the verb's ordinary meaning.
And although one cancook foodanddrive a car, one cannot cook a potor drive a car engine:these verbs do not license
semantic arguments of these types. Thus something special is happening in both syntax and semantics when these
verbs are followed by a direct object plus a predicate adjective.