Argument structure across unergative predicates and related interface phenomena.
Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities, ID2025-171173NB-I00, 2026-2030. 100.000€.
PI: Isabel Oltra-Massuet
Associated ROLLING Researchers: Josep Ausensi, Ester Fonts, Alícia Gual, Inmaculada López Solà, Elisabeth Gibert-Sotelo, Jordi Ginebra, Carles Royo, Anna Roigé, Bernat Vellvè
Argument structure across theoretical, experimental and applied domains: Unergativity at large and related interface phenomena.
Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities, PID2022-136610NB-I00, 2023-2026. 75.000€.
PI: Isabel Oltra-Massuet
Associated ROLLING Researchers: Josep Ausensi, Ester Fonts, Alícia Gual, Inmaculada López Solà, Elizaveta Kardovskaia, Elisabeth Gibert-Sotelo, Jordi Ginebra, Carles Royo, Anna Roigé, Bernat Vellvè
Argument structure and neurolinguistic processing at the lexicon-syntax interface: Unergative verbs with cognate object or obligatory prepositional object
Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation. FFI2016-80142-P. 31/12/2016-29/06/2021. 54.450€.
PI: Isabel Oltra-Massuet
Associated ROLLING Researchers: Georgina Alvarez-Morera, Celia Fullana, Jordi Ginebra, Elisabeth Gibert-Sotelo, Anna Montserrat, Carles Royo.
This project is situated within the study of the lexiconsyntax interface, with a particular focus on argument structure and event structure. It builds on and extends the research program developed in previous projects, aiming to advance our understanding of unergativity and related interface phenomena across languages, primarily Catalan, Spanish, and English, while also incorporating comparative evidence from other languages. The project places unergativity at the center of the investigation, arguing that a comprehensive theory of argument structure must examine unergative configurations in relation to transitive, atransitive, unaccusative, causative, resultative, and light verb structures, as well as root-based constraints on argument realization. The project adopts a neoconstructionist approach to argument structure, according to which argument-structural properties are syntactically constructed rather than projected from lexical roots. Within this framework, it addresses growing evidence that unergative verbs do not form a homogeneous class, but instead show systematic variation with respect to internal arguments, prepositional complements, cognate objects, and light verb constructions, as well as with respect to the semantic and syntactic properties of external arguments, including causation, agentivity, and animacy. Particular attention is paid to the interaction between these properties and the internal structure and semantic contribution of roots, contributing to ongoing debates within theoretical approaches. A core theoretical goal is to refine our understanding of the interaction between roots, event structure, and argument structure. In this context, the project develops new lines of research on (i) optionally causative manner verbs in Catalan, and (ii) a previously underdescribed class of roots expressing inherent properties of animate individuals, which systematically resist change-of-state structures and challenge free-distribution approaches to root meaning. These case studies contribute to a broader typology of roots based on their compatibility with event types, derivational patterns, and argument selection. The project also undertakes a detailed investigation of empirical phenomena bearing on the limits of unergativity, including causative-passive structures, cognate object constructions, intransitive prepositional verbs, verbs of emission, psychological predicates, and light verb constructions. Building on a multilingual database of cognate objects, the research expands the empirical basis for contrastive analysis and addresses long-standing questions concerning their syntactic status. In parallel, the project conducts a corpus-based study of prepositional complements and verbal government in Catalan, aiming to provide a comprehensive classification of verbal alternations involving prepositional complements. In addition to synchronic analyses, the project incorporates a diachronic component through a corpus-based study of the syntactic evolution of selected Catalan psychological verbs from the 11th century to the present, tracing changes in argument realization and case alternations. Methodologically, the project combines fine-grained theoretical analysis with corpus-based research, experimental methods, and dialectal data. The project further enhances its social impact by transferring theoretical and descriptive results to language teaching through theory-informed pedagogical proposals.
This project is framed within the study of the lexicon-syntax-morphology interface. It seeks to improve our knowledge about the nature of unergativity at large and related interface phenomena across patterns of argument structure and event structure, mainly in Romance and Germanic, but also across other languages. Our program places a special focus on the combinatorial properties and (sub)eventive aspectual structure of unergative events, in relation to (a)transitive and unaccusative structures, the morphosyntactic properties of (un)selected objects, which includes cognate objects and prepositional verbs, the syntax of external arguments and their relation to agentivity and animacy, the compositionality of light verb structures and how they relate to parallel synthetic constructions, controversial case studies like psychological verbs, or the role of lexical-conceptual information and morphological composition in the licensing and delimitation of argument and event structure. The research program reinforces its lasting social impact by adding a significant research line on the direct applicability of research outcomes to the domain of language teaching and transfer to applied online tools, to bridge the gap between scientific progress and its effective societal implementation.
This project must essentially be framed within the study of the lexicon-syntax interface and it seeks to improve our knowledge about the nature and sources of variation across patterns of argument structure and event structure in four different phenomena, namely unergativity and its relationship to light verb structures, cognate object structures and constructions with obligatory prepositional complements, in Romance languages (Spanish and Catalan) as well as in Germanic languages (English and German). In addition to a thorough description and detailed analysis of these phenomena within the (neo)constructionist frameworks, this research on argument structure and event structure of unergative verbs incorporates the neurolinguistic analysis of morphosyntactic patterns as a novelty. Specifically, we apply behavioral methods of neurolinguistic processing, as well as magnetoencephalographic (MEG) brain monitoring techniques that measure and monitor electrical brain activity in response to certain linguistic stimuli, in order to test the validity of linguistic hypotheses on unergativity and cognate object constructions. This is done on the basis of the predictive power of each linguistic hypothesis with respect to the relationship between linguistic representations, their linguistic processing and their neural correlates. This project also includes the creation of two data bases, one for constructions with obligatory prepositional complement in the languages under study, and a second one for cognate object constructions in the languages of the world; both should serve to establish and analyze syntactic patterns that should help formulate theories of morphosyntactic variation in these areas. Hence, this project pursues a double goal, theoretical and empirical: (i) to test the validity of theoretical hypotheses and, (ii) to describe and analyzing empirical evidence.