A Crosslinguistic Observation of Resultative Constructions

概要

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There are two types of resultative constructions, i.e., weak and strong resultative constructions. It has been observed that some languages lack strong resultative constructions, while others have both types. In this paper, I demonstrate that the crosslinguistic difference in the existence of strong resultative constructions can be captured in terms of the syntactic category of the result phrase: the result phrase must be realized as a PP in a language if and only if the language lacks strong resultative constructions. Based on this observation, I propose that weak and strong resultative constructions have different syntactic structures: both APs and PPs are licensed as the result phrases in weak resultative constructions, while only APs are licensed in strong resultative constructions. I also argue that Germanic languages allow PPs to be the result phrases even in strong resultative constructions, due to the special status of Germanic prepositions.