The Effect of Focus on Argument Structure: Depictives vs Resultatives

Abstract

A variety of linguistic evidences have been to support the assumption that depictives and resultatives are different in their thematic structures with a main predicate, despite they appear identical on the surface. Both depictives and resultative contain a subject NP, a verb, an object NP, and an adjective following the object NP, as shown in (1)-(2). However, the thematic relation between the verbs and the adjectives are different. In depictives, the adjective characterizes the object NP in relation to the action or process described by the verb. Thus, (la) means: 'I ate the beef and at the time I ate it, it was raw.' The NP is characterized at the time of the action of the verb. In the resultatives, the final adjective characterizes the state of the object NP, a state which results from the action or process described by the verb. Thus, (2a) means: I caused the window to be clean by wiping it; the adjective describes the final state of the NP. (1) a. I ate the beef raw. b. I ate the food cold (depictives) (2) a. I wiped the window clean. b. I kicked the door open. (resultatives) Recently it has been proposed that the argument structure is reflected by sentence accentuation (Schmerling 1976, Gusenhoven 1983, Selkirk 1984). The main claim in the focus theory (e.g., accent percolation theory) is that in a focus constituent consisting of a head and an argument, the accent is realized on the argument, everything else being equal (Gussenhoven 1983, Selkirk 1984). Uhmann (1991) proposes that if focus is assigned to a constituent, all the phonological phrases of that constituent bear an accent. She also points out that a head and an argument form a single phonological phrase, whereas a head and an adjunct form a separate phonological phrase, Following Uhmann (1991), I assume that a pitch accent is the evidence for phonological units and manifests focused words or constituents. The accentual differences between head-argument and head-adjunct are clearly shown by Gussenhoven (1992) as follows: when a head-argument structure is in focus, as in (3), the accent falls on the argument, tent, while when a head-adjunct structure is in focus, as in (4), an accent is realized on the head smoked and the adjunct tent, which are in separate phonological phrases. Likewise, both gerookt 'smoked', and tent 'tent' are accented in Dutch. The phonological phrase is represented by parenthesis, the focus structure is by bracket and the accented words are capitalized. (3) a. John [ ( stayed in the TENT) l b. John [ ( in the TENT gebleven)] F (4)

a. John [(SMOKED)(in the TENT)] F b. John [(heeft in the TENT) (gerookt)]F (Gussenhoven 1992: 94) Does the distinction between an argument and an adjunct exist? My goal in this paper is to investigate the issue of how the theory of focus applies to the different types of secondary constructions, namely depictive and resultative constructions. The experiments are conducted to examine the statuses of resultative and depictive constituents in terms of their focus marking.