Verbs and their verb frames are the topic of my dissertation. The main question I seek to answer is: what determines that a particular verb appears in an intransitive or a transitive frame, or in both or even in other verb frames? Investigating Dutch verbs and verb frames, my goal is to determine the nature of the lexical primitives in terms of which verbs are characterized in the lexicon and how these define how verbs map onto syntax. The main thesis is that a verb's event type properties define the mapping relation, rather than a theta-grid, argument structure or lexical-conceptual structure.
The results of this dissertation contribute to the research program that sets out to investigate if the mapping patterns of verbs can be derived on the basis of lexical properties and/or more general properties of the lexicon-syntax interface system. It is a search for the bare roots of the lexicon.
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