sublexical modality and the structure of lexical semantic representations

JEAN-PIERRE KOENIG and ANTHONY R. DAVIS

SUBLEXICAL MODALITY AND THE STRUCTURE OF LEXICALSEMANTIC REPRESENTATIONS?

ABSTRACT. This paper argues for a largely unnoted distinction between relational andmodal components in the lexical semantics of verbs. We hypothesize that many verbsencode two kinds of semantic information: a relationship among participants in a situationand a subset of circumstances or time indices at which this relationship is evaluated. Thelatter we termsublexical modality.

We show that linking regularities between semantic arguments and syntactic functionsprovide corroborating evidence in favor of this semantic distinction, noting cases in whichthe semantic grounding of linking through participant-role properties apparently fails. Thissemantic grounding can be preserved, however, once we abstract away from sublexicalmodality in lexical semantic representations. Semantically-based linking constraints areinsensitive to the sublexical modality component of lexical entries and depend only oninformation in a predicator’s “situational core”.

1. INTRODUCTION

Much research in lexical semantics has been devoted to distinguishing thevarious kinds of semantic information contributed by verbs on the basisof their morphosyntactic behavior (see Jackendoff (1983), Foley and VanValin (1984), Talmy (1985), Pinker (1986), Grimshaw (1993), RappaportHovav and Levin (1998) among others). Implicit in this research is theadoption of Jackendoff’s Grammatical Constraint Principle as a tool foruncovering layers of lexical meaning: semantic representations that ac-count for otherwise arbitrary syntactic and lexical generalizations shouldbe preferred (see Jackendoff (1983)). This paper follows this tradition andargues for a seldom noted distinction between relational and modal com-ponents in the semantic information contributed by verbs. We suggest thatmaking this distinction explicit best captures some salient semantic simil-? This paper is a much extended and revised version of Davis and Koenig (1999).

We would like to thank Emmon Bach, Cleo Condoravdi, and Kean Kaufmann for usefuldiscussion of the issues discussed in this paper and to Corinne Grimm for many helpfulcomments on a previous version of this paper. Finally, our grateful thanks to Beth Levinand three anonymous reviewers for their invaluable comments. The order of the authors’names is random; each contributed equally to this paper.

Linguistics and Philosophy24: 71–124, 2001.© 2001Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.

72 JEAN-PIERRE KOENIG AND ANTHONY R. DAVIS

arities across various series of verbs. Furthermore, as is typical within thetradition to which we have just alluded, we view the role of this hypothesisin modeling the syntax-semantics interface as significant corroboratingevidence. In this case, issues in linking theory provide the independentmotivation for our lexical semantic hypothesis.

Linking or mapping theories are theories of the correspondencebetween semantic arguments and syntactic functions. Their goal is to min-imize the amount of information that individual lexical entries must specifyabout the relations between semantic roles and syntactic dependents anduncover the general principles through which this mapping is effectedwithin and across languages. Many recent influential proposals hypothes-ize that linking is partly or wholly determined by fine-grained lexicalsemantic properties of verbs (Pinker (1989), Jackendoff (1990), Dowty(1991), Levin (1993), Van Valin (1993), Goldberg (1995), Levin andRappaport Hovav (1995), Wechsler (1995a), Davis and Koenig (2000)).Despite significant differences in detail, these scholars all maintain thatproperties of participant roles in the situation types denoted by predicatorsare a major determinant of the syntactic function of the dependents thatdenote these participants.1

To motivate our proposal regarding the lexical semantics of verbs, thispaper addresses some cases in which this widely held view apparentlyfails. We focus on series of verbs with identical linking patterns, but whichdo not share the participant-role properties typically claimed to underliethe relationship between their semantic arguments and syntactic depend-ents. Our hypothesis is that, despite appearances, verbs in each seriesdoshare the relevant participant-role properties, provided the semantics ofpredicators is divided into two components, asituational corecompon-ent, which categorizes types of relations between participants in situationsand the roles these participants play in them, and asublexical modalitycomponent, which evaluates these relations at various world and timeindices. By distinguishing between these two classes of properties of situ-ations we show that the semantic grounding of linking can be maintained.Semantically-sensitive linking constraints (for direct arguments) only de-pend on one class of semantic properties, those of the situational core; theyare insensitive to the sublexical modality component of lexical entries.Linking-theoretic considerations thus constitute additional evidence infavor of our lexical semantic hypothesis.

1 We use the termpredicator in this paper to refer to members of major lexical cat-egories that denote types of situations. Here we are primarily concerned with verbs, butnominalizations, adjectives, and semantically contentful prepositions are also predicators.

SUBLEXICAL MODALITY 73

2. THE PROBLEM

2.1. The Vagaries of Entailments

We begin our foray into the lexical semantics of verbs by considering aproblem that most semantically-based theories of linking face. The natureof the difficulty will lead us into our hypothesis that the semantics of pre-dicators should be partitioned into two different kinds of properties, whichwe explore in the next section.

We know of at least three ways to use semantic information in mappingsemantic arguments onto syntactic dependents.

• Introduce a set of thematic roles, such asAGENT, THEME, and so on,as primitives. Linking rules can then refer to these roles (e.g., Fillmore(1968)).• Decompose the meaning of words and correlate argument positions in

the resulting intermediary semantic metalanguage with particular sub-categorized elements (e.g., Carter (1976), Foley and Van Valin (1984),Pinker (1989), Jackendoff (1990)).• Use a set of entailments true of participants in situations felicitously

described by the verb. Linking constraints are then defined in termsof these entailments (e.g., Dowty (1991), Wechsler (1995b), Koenig(1994), Davis (1996)).

The first option assumes that each verb is associated with a list oflabeled arguments. The verbdrink in (1), for instance, would be associatedwith the list〈AGENT, PATIENT〉.2

(1) John drank some milk.

The regularity that subjects of active verbs denote agentive participantsis then expressed through various rules. For example, several scholars pro-pose a rule that links the highest of a verb’s arguments on a hierarchyof semantic roles (AGENT in the case at hand) to the subject function(or phrase-structure position). The deficiencies of this approach are well-known. It cannot in itself provide a satisfactory answer to fundamentalquestions as to the number and types of semantic roles. Labeling the rolesof a verb’s dependents is ultimately left to the varying judgements of dif-ferent linguists. Without clear criteria and some consensus on the basis forthis labeling, linking theories based on this option are either stipulative orcircular, as made abundantly clear by Jackendoff (1983) or Dowty (1991),among others.

2 When describing each of these options, we ignore irrelevant differences betweenindividual proposals for the sake of simplicity.


The second option attempts to remedy this situation by defining se-mantic roles such asAGENT or PATIENT in terms of argument positions ina semantic metalanguage that results from the decomposition of the lexicalsemantics of verbs. A verb such asdrink, for instance, might receive thesemantic representation in (2) (adapted from Jackendoff (1990), p. 53).An agent might be defined, then, among other possibilities, as the firstargument of the metalanguage predicateCAUSE (see Jackendoff (1972),Jackendoff (1976)); linking then proceeds as in the first approach by ref-erence to a hierarchy of thematic roles, or by principles that map directlyfrom lexical semantic representations to syntactic arguments.

(2) CAUSE ([ ], GO([LIQUID ], [ TO([ IN ([MOUTH OF ([ ])])])]))

Semantic decomposition attempts to avoid the problems arising fromtreating semantic roles as primitives, by defining them in terms of argu-ment positions of a semantic metalanguage. To the extent that the lexicaldecomposition of a verb is justified, the question of which role shouldbe assigned to its dependents receives a clear answer. But this approachmust be supplemented, since decomposition by itself is insufficient. Theresulting metalanguage formulas are not yet interpreted, so their meaningis unclear. Until their model-theoretic interpretation (or “cognitive con-strual” in Cognitive Semantics) is provided, no independent justificationexists for the lexical semantics on which linking depends. This model-theoretic or “cognitive” semantic grounding is what most proponents oflexical decomposition implicitly or explicitly assume.

The third option, though implicitly related to (partial) semantic de-composition, offers the advantage of clear semantic grounding. Eachparticipant in a situation of a given type has certain entailments that hold ofit by virtue of the role it plays in that situation. These entailments can thenform the basis for linking rules and the subcategorizations of predicators.For example, the ditransitive linking pattern in (3) is associated with a par-ticular semantics – roughly, causing to possess (see Green (1974), Oehrle(1976), Pinker (1989), Levin (1993), Goldberg (1995), among others).

(3) Susan gave Brenda $10.

In a giving event there are of necessity at least three participants playingdifferent roles. One participant is entailed to causally initiate the action;it is realized as the subject. Another participant is entailed to receivesomething; it is realized as the first object. The third is entailed to comeinto possession of the second; it is realized as the second object. On thisview, linking from a predicator’s semantic arguments to its syntactic de-pendents is driven by lexical entailments of the participant roles in the


type of situation the verb denotes. In the following, we refer to the en-tailments of participant roles that are germane to linking ascharacteristicentailments. Thus, a characteristic entailment of the giver in (3) is that itcausally initiates the action. By relying on lexical entailments, independentsemantic basis for linking is provided, since lexical entailments can be as-sessed independently of the linking constraints themselves. In other words,participant entailments shared among classes of situations described bypredicators provide the required semantic substratum to either semanticroles or structural positions in a semantic metalanguage used to decomposelexical meanings.3

Moreover, by relying on entailments shared by fairly broad classes ofpredicators, we also avoid decomposing their meaning in an unnecessarilyfine-grained manner. Not all aspects of a predicator’s meaning need berepresented through decomposition; meaning postulates (understood, as isstandard since Montague (1974), as constraints on appropriate models forthe interpretation of a language) or other model-theoretic tools can capturesome of the work done by decomposition. We can thus limit decomposi-tion to the extent demanded by a model of the syntax-semantics interface.In other words, the form of the semantic metalanguage we adopt canbe strictly constrained by Jackendoff’s Grammatical Constraint principle.Semantic decomposition is notrequired to provide fine-grained semanticdistinctions because lexical entailments shared by classes of predicates areboth necessary and sufficient for that purpose. We encapsulate this view inthe following hypothesis.

HYPOTHESIS 1 (STRONG GROUNDING HYPOTHESIS). The semanticgrounding of linking depends on a limited set of lexically entailed parti-cipant properties which are true of arguments of the predicates denoted bylexical items.

The use of the phrasea limited setin the statement of the hypothesisis what makes it strong; a semantically-sensitive linking constraint appliesor does not apply to an argument depending on whether or not one of a

3 The use of entailments can lead to some vagueness, as a reviewer suggests. En-tailments are model-theoretic relations which, by their very nature, are outside themetalanguage we use to describe the semantics encoded in lexical entries. As such, theirsatisfaction cannot be checked by looking at the metalanguage we use in our descriptions. Itcan only be checked by considering whether the model interpreting the metalanguage struc-tures “fits” our intuitions regarding properties of event participants. This leaves some roomfor vagueness to creep in when assessing whether a participant in a situation bears the rel-evant entailment. But, ultimately, this uncertainty is inherent in any semantic interpretation,be it model-theoretic or “cognitive” in nature.


limited set of properties (being the controller of the unfolding event,. . . )is lexically entailed to hold of it.

It is important to stress once more that entailment-based and decom-positional approaches can be combined. In fact, as suggested above, theytypically (implicitly) are, and this is exactly the kind of theory we haveargued for elsewhere (see Davis and Koenig (2000) and section 4). Morespecifically, we have proposed, along with Foley and Van Valin (1984),Jackendoff (1990), and others, that linking constraints are stated over struc-tured lexico-semantic representations, but that, additionally, as argued inDowty (1991) and Wechsler (1995b), these structured representations aregrouped into distinct classes on the basis of participant-role entailments.

2.2. Where Entailments Fail

We now discuss a set of cases that pose a problem for the entailment-based views of linking typified by the Strong Grounding Hypothesis (andfor any sort of linking theory that attempts to provide solid semanticgrounding for its primitives, whether they are semantic roles or elementsof a decompositional metalanguage). These difficulties motivate parcellingout the lexical semantic information contributed by predicators into twogroups. The problem is illustrated by the syntactic similarity and semanticdifferences between (3) and the verbs in (4). The entailments discussedabove forgiveand associated with the ditransitive linking pattern Wechsler(1995b), or their equivalents in the semantic representations associatedwith the ditransitive linking pattern in Pinker (1989) and Goldberg (1995),do not apply to the denotations of the ditransitive verbssend, offer, andso forth. No entailment of an actual transfer of possession is present in(4), yet these verbs display the ditransitive linking pattern ofgive (a pointexplicitly made by Goldberg (1995) and implicit in Green’s (1974) andPinker’s (1989) discussion of verbs of future having).

(4) Burns sent/offered/owed/promised/charged/denied Smithers $10 forthe dinner.

By sending or offering Smithers $10, Burns may intend that he receivesit, but the receipt of the money is not entailed. If Burns owes or promiseshim $10, he certainly has not received it yet. Lastly, if Burns charges ordenies him $10, again no transfer of possession has taken place, and Burnsdesires that Smithers doesnothave the $10. To account for the ditransitivelinking pattern of all these verbs, we must either find a different set ofentailments or postulate that their semantics is fundamentally the same asthat ofgive, but contain some additional modifying elements.


The pattern we observe in (4) is not restricted to verbs displaying aditransitive syntax. It is pervasive. Verbs whose denotations involve no-tions such as possession, perception, successfully performing an action,and successfully inducing another to perform an action also display link-ing patterns mimicked by related verbs that do not entail possession,perception, or the performance of any action, as seen in examples (5)–(8).4

(5) Bill had/received/lost/lacked/needed many books.

(6) Sue perceived/noticed/overlooked/missed him.

(7) Bill managed/tried/failed/neglected to read the books.

(8) Sue forced/urged/defied/forbade Bill to go.

Theories of linking that are semantically grounded through participantentailments (whether decompositional or not) thus cannot invoke thesimple conditions suggested by the semantics of verbs likehave, perceive,manage, andforce to account for the behavior of the related sets of verbsabove. The entailments typically deemed responsible for the linking oftheir possessor, perceiver, and causer arguments to the subject position donot hold of all the related verbs in these series, which display the samelinking pattern. As with the set of verbs in (4), the identical linking be-havior within each set of verbs in (5)–(8) seems to disconfirm the StrongGrounding Hypothesis.

To round out this survey of difficulties encountered in attempting toprovide a consistent semantics for linking rules, we mention another link-ing constraint that groups verbs in a manner similar to the series wejust discussed. Levin and Rappaport Hovav (1995) (p. 153) propose thefollowing linking rule:

(9) Existence Linking Rule(revised) The argument of a verb whoseexistence is asserted or denied is its direct internal argument.

This rule groups verbs such asexist, appear, build, disappear, vanish,and so forth. This group clearly parallels some of those we mentionedabove (cf.haveand lack). We do not take a position on the underlyingmotivations for the linking rule; we mention it simply to illustrate a prob-lem that may be wider than the series in (4)–(8) would indicate. As is

4 The linking theory presented in Dowty (1991) is not subject to these difficulties in thesame way as the other theories to which we refer. See the next section for a discussion ofDowty’s theory.


the case for those groups of verbs, the relevant entailed property of theparticipant roles of some verbs (in this case, existence or appearance) iscontradicted by others in the group (those that entail nonexistence). Con-sequently, Levin and Rappaport are led to a disjunctive definition of thesemantics that underlies the verb class, a less than optimal solution.

It should be noted that precisely how many and which of the verbsin examples (4)–(8) constitute exceptions to the claim that participantentailments ground linking depends on the particular linking theory. In par-ticular, as noted by reviewers, the theories of Pinker (1989), Levin (1993),Goldberg (1995), and Wechsler (1995b) are subject to exceptions in a waythat Dowty (1991) is not. We address this issue fully in the next section.For the time being, we simply conclude that the series of verbs presentedin (4)–(8) seem to falsifymostcurrent, semantically-grounded theoriesof linking, in that the entailed properties of event participants which ul-timately ground those theories only hold for the events described by someof the verbs in the series. Yet lexically-entailed participant properties havethe virtue of providing a solid semantic grounding, which we would like topreserve in an adequate linking theory. Section 3 solves this quandary, butbefore presenting our solution, we examine previous attempts at solvingthe issue.

2.3. Some Previous Attempts at a Solution

The issue we have raised has been partially addressed by others, but someaspects remain unresolved. One approach is to modify the entailments onwhich linking constraints are based. This is the strategy Wechsler (1995b)suggests for some of the verbs in (4). He proposes that the entailmentresponsible for linking the recipient to the first object is too strong; the firstobject might be merely theintendedpossessor of the second object ratherthan the actual possessor. This accounts nicely forsendandoffer, and forditransitive forms of verbs such asbakeandwrite. If Bill sends Mathilda acake or bakes her a cake, he intends her to have a cake. Since the transferof possession is also intended in ditransitive uses ofgive, this weakeningof the entailment responsible for the first object’s linking generalizes theentailment-based linking constraint on the first object. But it does not seemto apply toowe, charge, or deny, which will require other modifications ofthe basic entailments used in linking the arguments ofgive. There doesnot seem to be an entailment that covers the first object of those verbsas well as those of the verbs we have just discussed. Still other changesin entailments are needed for the verbs in (5)–(8). This accumulation ofdistinct entailments also misses the semantic similarities between the verbsin (4)–(8). So, for example, bothlackanddenyinvolve a negation which is


absent inhaveandgive. Similarly, bothreceiveandnoticedenote a changeof state; in the case ofreceive, the resulting state is a state of possession,while in the case ofnotice, the resulting state is a perception. We canexpress this parallelism between these verbs through four-way analogiessuch as the ones in (10) (we follow the tradition of using primes to denotethe meaning of a verb):

(10) a. lack’ : have’ : : deny’ : give’

b. receive’ : have’ : : notice’ : perceive’

These analogies are not perfect and the meaning of each of these verbsis richer than what is expressed in (10). But they illustrate the intuitivesemantic parallelism that Wechsler’s account does not capture, and whichwe believe an adequate lexical semantic analysis of these verbs shouldmodel. We provide an analysis of the lexical semantics of predicators insection 3 in which the semantic relationship betweenhaveand perceiveis similar to that betweenreceiveand notice; the semantic relationshipbetweenmanageand try is similar to that betweenforce and urge, andso forth. By not isolating these parallelisms, Wechsler is obliged to un-duly multiply linking constraints, adding at least one constraint for eachrecalcitrant class of verbs. This multiplication of linking constraints is in-dicative of a missed lexical semantic generalization. To sum up, Wechsler’sproposal would force us to introduce several linking rules to account for thelinking of direct objects of ditransitive verbs, since no entailment sharedby the referents of their objects is evident. Moreover, it does not accountfor the parallelism between the series of verbs in (4)–(8).

Similar shortcomings are evident in the approach of Goldberg (1995),though she attacks the problem differently. She assumes argument struc-ture patterns are each associated with a particular meaning.5 The centralmeaning of the ditransitive, for example, is paraphrasable asX CAUSES

Y TO RECEIVE Z. As is the case in Wechsler’s proposal, this semanticsdoes not accurately reflect the meanings ofsend, promise, and so forth. Toaccount for such cases, she proposes that the meaning of linking patterns isextended by “polysemy links”. For example, the ditransitive constructionis also associated with the related meaning ‘the conditions of satisfactionimply X CAUSES Y TO RECEIVE Z’ (p. 75). Goldberg does not explicitlyextend this account to the parallel patterns for verbs of possession in (5),

5 Goldberg (1997) presents a more complete picture of the relation between verbs andthe argument structure constructions in which they can participate. Since her new proposaldoes not affect the point we make in the text, we do not discuss it in this paper for reasonsof space.


verbs of perception in (6), or the control verbs in (7) and (8). But, givenher observation that similar polysemy links hold of resultatives, it is easyto extend her analysis to these other cases and say that each of the linkingpatterns exemplified in (5)–(8) displays the same polysemy links she dis-cusses with respect to ditransitives. The intuition would be the same in allcases: a particular surface configuration of dependents, as a construction(or sign), is associated with a specific meaning. These constructional signs,like ordinary lexical items, are subject to meaning shifts and extensions,leading to a synchronic polysemy pattern. Although no single entailmentcan be associated with a particular configuration of dependents (such as〈NP, NP, NP〉 for ditransitives), the class of entailments or semantic rep-resentations associated with a single syntactic configuration obeys regularpatterns of polysemy.

As we see it, there are two main difficulties with Goldberg’s solution.First, why are theseparticular polysemy links recurrent? Do they form anatural class or can we add to the list at will and randomly? Goldberg doesnot address this issue directly. We argue below that they do form a naturalclass and to that extent, Goldberg’s addition of individual polysemy linksmisses a generalization; her account does not provide an answer to thequestion of whythesepolysemy links rather than other possible ones arefound again and again in argument structure constructions, as illustratedin (4)–(8). Goldberg’s solution, like Wechsler’s, does not express the intu-itive semantic parallelism between the series of verbs in these examples.Because it does not capture what is consistently similar and consistentlydissimilar in the lexical semantics of these series of verbs, Goldberg’s ac-count does not explain why these particular semantic differences betweenverbs, but not others, can be ignored in combining a verb meaning and aconstruction meaning.

Secondly, Goldberg’s analysis would force us to say that a given linkingpattern is polysemous between meaningsA and not A, so as to accountfor the identical linking of verbs such ashave and lack, perceiveandmiss, or force and forbid. To our knowledge, such polysemy is rarely, ifever, attested in lexical semantics. Consequently, there seems to be littlemotivation for positing polysemy links in such cases.

Finally, as we mentioned in the previous section, Dowty’s theory oflinking generally does not encounter the difficulties we discuss. Dowtyhypothesizes that participant properties relevant to subject and object se-lection (what Dowty calls proto-agent and proto-patient properties) formcluster categories and that subject and object selection is determined bya numerical comparison of the proto-agent and proto-patient propertiesborne by each argument, as stated in (11):


(11) ARGUMENT SELECTION PRINCIPLE (Dowty (1991)):In predicates with grammatical subject and object, the argumentfor which the predicate entails the greatest number of Proto-Agentproperties will be lexicalized as the subject of the predicate; the argu-ment having the greatest number of Proto-Patient entailments will belexicalized as the direct object.

Such a linking theory can be seen as a weakened version of the StrongGrounding Hypothesis that linking constraints are associated withpartic-ular participant properties (such as “causers are realized as the subject ofactive verbs”, . . . ). Linking constraints in Dowty’s theory only depend ona relative weighting of aclusterof participant properties. Because argu-ment selection depends on a numerical comparison, not all proto-agentand proto-patient entailments need to be satisfied by the subject and ob-ject of every predicator. Whether the subject bears a particular propertyis not crucial. As long as the subject’s referent is entailed to bearmoreproto-agent properties than other arguments do, Dowty’s argument selec-tion principle is not invalidated. Thus, Dowty’s model can account for thelinking patterns of most of the verbs in (3)–(8). The verbowe presentsa difficulty, however, because neither the ower nor the owee bears moreproto-role entailments than the other. Thus Dowty’s model does not ruleout a verb with the meaning ofowe, but whose subject denotes the oweerather than the ower. Apart from this, we can find no obstacles to Dowty’stheory among the verbs in (3)–(8).

For completeness, we note that whether or not Dowty’s proposal ac-counts for the series of verbs in (5) is difficult to assess, since none of theproto-agent or proto-patient properties he proposes apply to either argu-ment position in this case. Sentience, in particular, does not apply, sinceDowty makes explicit that for this entailment to hold it is not sufficientthat the filler of the relevant argument position is lexically entailed to bea sentient being, he or she must have a notion of the event. Some of theentailments that one might want to add to distinguish the two argumentpositions ofhave– possessors control possessed entities or have them asparts, for example – do not apply to other verbs in the series. It is likewiseunclear whether Dowty’s proposal accounts for the uniform pattern of firstand second objects among the verbs in the series in (4). It is doubtful thatthe first object’s referent has any more proto-patient properties than thesecond object’s referent. Furthermore, entailments that one might wantto add to distinguish between the two postverbal NPs, such as being arecipient, do not equally apply to all verbs in the series.6

6 It is true, as a reviewer points out, that these verbs also have an alternant in which theNP which is the secondary object in the ditransitive alternant is the direct object and the


We conclude that although Dowty’s account of linking is not falsifiedby any of the series of verbs in (4)–(8), it does not determine the linkingpatterns within two of the series of verbs as it stands. In addition, webelieve several considerations militate against Dowty’s overall approach tolinking and suggest the need to seek an alternative explanation of the datain (4)–(8). We first discuss deficiencies in empirical coverage and then turnto more theoretical issues.

The purview of Dowty’s theory is confined to strictly transitive verbs.It is silent on intransitives and on the selection of objects in ditransitives.Dowty’s theory cannot therefore capture semantically-based linking regu-larities which cut across the transitivity of verbs and, as Davis and Koenig(2000) point out, extending the theory to cover intransitives proves diffi-cult. Finally, it does not account for the linking of some strictly transitiveverbs, namely a subset of morphologically causative predicates, as arguedin Davis and Koenig (2000). The weakening of the Strong GroundingHypothesis thus comes at a relatively high empirical cost.

There are also three theoretical reasons to seek an alternative refor-mulation of the Strong Grounding Hypothesis that does not unnecessarilyweaken it, as Dowty’s numerical comparison approach does. Our conten-tion is that a lexical semantic analysis of the analogies in (10) forms thebasis of the proper refinement of the Strong Grounding Hypothesis andrenders Dowty’s numerical comparison procedure unnecessary. To explorethis point fully, we must anticipate the lexical semantic analysis presentedin the next section. For present purposes, readers need only assume thatwhen we say that a particular proto-agent entailment holds of a situationparticipant, we mean that it holds relative to a subset of possible worlds.One of our strongest motivations in seeking an alternative to (11) is that asingle participant property can suffice to determine the linking of the com-plement that realizes this participant to the subject or object of its activeform (modulothe semantic analysis we present in the next section). Herewe concentrate on subjects for the sake of brevity. For all verbs that denotecausal events, the only proto-agent entailment that we need to consideris whether the participant causally affects another participant in the event.Consequently, no numerical comparison is necessary to account for subjectselection in causative verbs. Similarly, among non-causative verbs, sen-tience is sufficient to ensure mapping to subject (assuming, as we argue in

NP which is the first object is expressed in a PP. But, this does not account for the fact thatthere is a pervasive regularity in the linking of ditransitive verbs: verbs such asschmowin(i) do not seem to occur in English and many other languages.

(i)∗Marge chmowed a chocolate donut Homer.

(Intended meaning: “Marge showed/gave/offered Homer a chocolate donut.”)


section 5.2, that verbs such asfrightenare causatives). Volitional involve-ment in the event is also sufficient to ensure mapping to subject position innon-causative verbs. Finally, for all verbs for which being in motion countsas a proto-agent entailment, the NP denoting the moving object is mappedonto subject position.7 Certainly, more than one proto-entailment can holdof a single participant role. As Dowty notes, the referent of the subject ofthe active form ofbuild bears all proto-agent properties except that it is notnecessarily in motion. However, linking never requires us to compare howmany proto-agent properties are borne by each participant role providedwe adopt the following section’s analysis of the similarities exemplified in(10).

Second, Dowty’s theory does not take into consideration the relationalnature of many proto-role entailments, as Croft (1998) points out; proto-entailments have been extracted from the situations that ground themfor the purposes of the numerical comparison. Thus, the proto-agent orproto-patient status of an entailment of motion depends on the presenceof another entity relative to which it moves. Similarly, causally affect-ing (a proto-agent property) and being causally affected (a proto-patientproperty) are correlated properties. Dowty’s proto-entailment lists do notrepresent this correlation. The fact that, by contrast to theories based on theStrong Grounding Hypothesis, situation types do not play a role in Dowty’slinking theory prevents it from modeling the semantics of particular linkingpatterns (such as the ditransitive) or the sensitivity of valence alternationsto verb classes which are defined in terms of situation types, on which somany researchers have insisted (see Pinker (1989), Levin (1993), Goldberg(1995), and many others).

Third, Dowty’s theory groups verb meanings in ways that are otherwisenot needed and, conversely, misses groupings that are otherwise motivated.Consider the verbsurge andpersuade. According to Dowty’s numericalcomparison procedure, the selection of the urger or persuader as theirrespective subjects has nothing to do with their common “core” causalsemantics (as in the accounts of Talmy (1988) and Jackendoff (1990)); infact, it has nothing to do with the similarities in the situations they denote.Causality is the proto-agent entailment that ensures the persuading entityor event is mapped onto subject position (since what is persuasive neednot be volitional or sentient). Volitionality is the proto-agent entailmentthat ensures that the urger is realized as a subject (since causation is notentailed, except modally, as we argue in the next section). This means that

7 Our qualification is needed since Dowty proposes that motion counts both as a proto-agent and proto-patient property, depending on the presence or absence of other (causal)participants in the event.


for purposes of linkingpersuadefalls into the same class askill whereasurge falls into the same class asjog.

But, in fact, there is evidence outside of linking proper thatpersuadeandurge form a natural semantic class. As Sag and Pollard (1991) argue,controllers ofPRO subjects are determined by the semantics of controlverbs. The person being persuaded or urged serves as the controller of theunexpressedPROof theVP or S complement tourgeandpersuadebecauseboth verbs denote event types belonging to the class of situations in whichone entity or situation influences (or tries to influence) another. Our theoryaccounts for both controller selection and the similarity in linking throughthe commonality in meaning of these two verbs.

This last point is particularly relevant to the main purpose of this pa-per. The series of verbs in (4) through (8) bear some obvious, intuitive,semantic similarities that the analogies in (10) express. Theories of thelexical semantics of predicators that allow this commonality to be capturedand provide a stronger linking theory should be preferred. Of course, apartisan of Dowty’s approach could very well adopt our characterization ofthe semantic similarity between these series of verbs and reject our linkingtheory. But we will present an analysis of the semantic similarities of theseries of verbs in (4) through (8) that allows us to maintain a strongerapproach to linking based on single participant properties – the implicit orexplicit assumption of all semantically-based linking theories of which weare aware but Dowty’s – and thus renders unnecessary the weakening ofthe Strong Grounding Hypothesis that accompanies Dowty’s approach.

3. SUBLEXICAL MODALITY

In this section, we explore what we believe to be an ultimately more fruit-ful approach to the issues we have just presented. The central idea is thatthere are components of meaning common to each of the series of verbs in(4) through (8) and that it is these common elements of meaning that theinformal analogies in (10) attempt to represent. This shared componentof meaning, we argue, constitutes asituational core; that is, a categoryof relations among event participants. It is modified by modal informa-tion particular to each verb; that is, a way of selecting circumstances atwhich to evaluate those relations. We thus propose to introduce a modalcomponent (broadly construed) into the lexical entries of the verbs in (4)–(8) and propose that modal, negation, and temporal/aspectual operatorsmodify the situational core within lexical entries. This division of lex-ical semantic information into two classes of properties does not accountonly for the analogies in (10). In this distinction between modal and core


situational meaning lies a solution to the challenge that (4)–(8) present togrounding most theories of linking semantically. Although characteristicentailments of the situational core do not necessarily apply to a verb’sresultant meaning, theyalwayshold with respect to a (modally restricted)subset of the set of possible circumstances. To bring all of these verbswithin the purview of the Strong Grounding Hypothesis, we need onlyrelativize the characteristic entailments of dependents to the appropriatesubset of circumstances. We first illustrate this relativization with a fewexamples. The relevant subset of circumstances in the case ofpromise,lack, andneglect, is described in the italicized portion of (12b), (13b), or(14b).

(12) a. Susan promised Brenda $10.

b. ‘Susan caused Brenda to have $10in all circumstances in whichshe honors her promises.’

(13) a. Susan lacked $10.

b. ‘Susan had $10in all circumstances that are not the circumstancesin which Susan did not have $10.’

(14) a. Bill neglected to read the books.

b. ‘Bill did not read the books, but he read the booksin allcircumstances in which he acts according to obligation.’

What these paraphrases illustrate is that the common semantic compon-ents ofgive andpromise, haveand lack, and so forth, can be captured interms ofrestricted entailments; a promise entails a transfer of possessionin models in which the set of circumstances is restricted to those in whichpeople honor their promises (see below for a more formal definition ofthis restriction). With respect to these restricted models, the characteristicentailments of recipients go through; in those worlds, if you are prom-ised something, you receive something. Similarly, if you neglected to dosomething, you should have done it, that is, you did not do it, but in those(contrary-to-fact) circumstances in which you acted according to oblig-ations, you did do it. Thus, in this restricted set of circumstances, youdid initiate the event. Again, the linking-relevant semantic property (thesubject’s referent initiated the event) can be captured in terms of restrictedentailments. Ultimately, it is those restricted entailments, we claim, thatunderlie linking constraints.


A classification of some English verbs by their sublexical modalities isgiven in Table 1.8

The table should be interpreted as follows. A use of any verb in theneutral column denotes a situation of the type in thesemantic fieldcolumnon the left. Without further modal modification (e.g., bymust) this situ-ation actually occurs and the relevant characteristic entailments hold inall circumstances in which it occurs. Verbs in other columns add somemodal component to the shared situational meaning of the verbs in a givenrow. Modalmust be understood here in a broad sense; it includes negation(the eventuality denoted by the core situational meaning does not happen),irrealis (the eventuality occurred in all circumstances of a subset of all pos-sible circumstances, not necessarily including the actual circumstances),and inchoativity (the verb describes a change from or into an eventualitythat can be characterized by the predicate denoted by thesemantic fieldcolumn). The irrealis modal components fall into at least two categories,which we callenergeticand deontic (see below for a discussion of thedifference between the two classes). Finally, some verbs (marked by anasterisk in the table) involve more than one kind of modal modification.Consider the verbneglect, as used in (14). To neglect to perform an actionentails both that the action did not take place and that it ought to have takenplace. The meaning ofneglectthus includes both a negation and an irrealisoperator, neither of which has scope over the other.9

As suggested above, the principal observation on which our accountrests is that the characteristic entailments obtain provided we appropriatelyrestrict the set of possible circumstances in the model (see our discussionof promise). Of course, this proposal’s viability depends on the existence ofa motivated procedure for restricting the set of circumstances to consider.

8 Some of the distinctions in Table 1 correspond to Goldberg’s polysemy links (op.cit.).This is particularly true for what we call negative modals and a subset of our irrealismodals (the latter, though, are not treated as modals in her analysis). But Goldberg does notconsider inchoative or inchoative negative modals. Conversely, Goldberg makes more fine-grained distinctions than we do in other cases. For example, she treats verbs likebequeathas verbs of future transfer within the constellation of senses centered around ‘transfer-of-possession’. These differences between Goldberg’s polysemy approach and our modalclassification reflect the different basis of the semantic similarity between verbs in the same“constellation”. (See the previous section for the reasons we reject Goldberg’s analysis.)

9 The modality component might also include sublexical temporal information (R.Oehrle, p.c.; cf. Oehrle (1976)). See (i), which is vague as to whether Bill had the jobor notprior to the affair.

(i) The affair cost Bill the job.

Due to lack of space, we do not directly discuss sublexical temporal modal structure inthis paper.

SU

BL

EX

ICA

LM

OD

AL

ITY

87

TABLE I

A classification of verbs by their sublexical modality

neutral negativemodal

irrealis modal inchoativemodal

inchoative-negativemodal

deonticmodal

energeticmodal

semantic field

possession have lack need receive lose

perception perceive miss overlook∗ notice

causingpossession

give deny promise,owe,charge∗

send, offer

carrying out anaction

manage fail neglect∗ try

causing an otherto act∗∗

force,persuade

forbid require urge, defy

∗ The meanings of these verbs involve more than one kind of modal modification.∗∗ The sense of these verbs under consideration here is the one associated with theto VP complementation structure.


The question, then, is: how can we independently justify the selectionof circumstances in which characteristic participant properties are to beevaluated? In order to “sieve” the set of possible worlds and obtain thesubset relevant to linking constraints, we rely on three kinds of operations,each of which is independently motivated semantically: the selection ofa Modal Base, the treatment of negation in terms of a complement set ofcircumstances, and the temporally-defined selection of world/time indicesto model changes of state.

Let’s consider first verbs that include an irrealis modal component, suchas need, neglect, or try. We can use the procedure proposed by Kratzer(1981) with respect to modality operators encoded in words such asmust,can, and so forth. She assumes that each interpretation of a modality oper-ator requires the selection of a Modal Base; that is, a set of worlds in whichthe modality operates. If sentence (15) is, for example, interpreted as com-menting on Mathilda’s required presence at home (the deontic meaningof must), the Modal Base consists of all those worlds in which Mathildaabides by her obligations, and the sentence asserts that in all worlds inthat Modal Base, she is home. If instead we interpret (15) as commentingon our state of knowledge (the epistemic meaning ofmust), the ModalBase consists of all circumstances compatible with our knowledge, andthe sentence asserts that in all circumstances in that Modal Base, she ishome.

(15) Mathilda must be home.

In the case of verbs denoting modality operators, the selection of aModal Base is contextually determined; the discourse context helps theaddressee select the appropriate Modal Base ofmustin (15). Our proposalis that verbs such asneed, neglect, or promise lexically specify whichModal Base ought to be considered rather than leave it to the discoursecontext to determine. The Modal Base forneed, for example, is determ-ined by its subject’s referent’s desires (that is, only those circumstancesthat conform to these desires need be considered); the Modal Base forneglectis determined by obligations, and so forth. Each Modal Base is thuslexically selected rather than left open to contextual factors. This lexicallydetermined Modal Base constitutes the pool of worlds in which to checkfor a linking-relevant characteristic entailment. If we denote the ModalBase selected by a predicate P asMB(P) and represent the characteristicentailments associated with an argument position as in (16), we can rep-resent therestrictedcharacteristic entailment of the recipient argument ofpromiseas in (17).

(16) ∀x∀y∀z give’(x, y, z) |=M recipient’(z)


(17) ∀x∀y∀z promise’(x, y, z) |=M⋂

MB(promise′) recipient’(z)

The formula in (17) says that this characteristic entailment goes throughwhen the model only includes worlds that belong to the Modal Base ofpromise. Assuming that neutral verbs such asgivehave a null Modal Baserestriction, the nature of our reformulation of a semantically groundedtheory of linking should become clear; we consider characteristic entail-mentsas restrictedby the Modal Base associated with each verb. Neutralverbs simply constitute the limiting case of a Modal Base restriction; therestricted set is identical to the entire set of circumstances in the initialmodel.

We mentioned above that what we call irrealis modals come in at leasttwo varieties, energetic and deontic. They differ in the kind of Modal Basethat provides the basis for world selection. For deontic modals, the selectedworlds are worlds in which people do what they are supposed to do (theymake good on their promises, abide by their obligations, perceive whatthey should perceive, and so on). For energetic modals, the selected worldsare worlds in which the actions or situations denoted by the verb achievethe goals that motivate those actions or the inherent consequences whichresult from the occurrence of the situation. For example, the inherent goalof any urging is that its addressee is indeed persuaded and does the act heis urged to perform. The characteristic entailments hold in all those worldsin which that goal is attained (see Talmy (1991) for a similar point).10

To determine the subset of circumstances in which the characteristicentailments hold in the case of negative modal verbs such aslack or miss,we make use of another independently motivated procedure, namely theindirect definition of negation in dynamic approaches to meaning and in

10 The modal contribution of energetic modals cannot be paraphrased bytry (excepttryitself, of course). As a reviewer points out, the following two sentences are not semanticallysynonymous:

(i) I sent the package to John.(ii) I tried to send the package to John (but FedEx doesn’t pick up on Sunday).

Energetic modals attach to acts which include an inherent goal or situations which in-clude an inherent result, and indicate that their performance only entails the fulfillmentof their goal or result in a subset of all circumstances. Thus,sendin (i) indicates that thespeakerdid perform the act of sending a package, but this performance does not guaranteethat the package was received; that entailment only goes through within the Modal Base. Averb liketry in (ii), by contrast, indicates that the speaker performedan attemptto performan act of sending, although she might not have been able to successfully send it. In thiscase, it is the act of sending (not its resulting state) which is entailed to have occurred inthe Modal Base oftry.


update semantics (see Heim (1983b) or Chierchia (1995a) among others).We illustrate Heim’s approach to context updating with example (18).11

(18) a. Amanda came. (proposition expressed =p)

b. Amanda didn’t come. (proposition expressed =¬p)

If we refer to the set of ‘live alternatives’ in the sense of Stalnaker(1978) asc, assertingp (i.e., adding it to the common ground betweenspeaker and hearer) by uttering (18a) amounts to intersectingc with theset of circumstances in whichp is true. Asserting¬p, on the other hand,means first intersectingc with the set of circumstances in whichp is trueto yield c′ and subtracting that setc′ from the original contextc. Thedifference in the context update prompted by the assertion ofp and¬pis summarized in the formulas in (19).

(19) a. c + pb. c + (¬p) = c − (c + p)

Whereas characteristic entailments hold afterp is added to the currentcontext, when¬p is asserted, the characteristic entailments hold prior tosubtractingc′ from c. If we assume that the characteristic entailment borneby the referent of the subject of the active form ofhave in (5) repeatedbelow as (20) is that it has control over the referent of the object (see Davisand Koenig (2000)), this entailment is borne by the referent of the subjectof lack in c′, i.e. the complement of the set of circumstances in which Billlacks books.

(20) Bill had/received/lost/lacked/needed many books.

We can represent the situation as in (21)–(22), wherec′ stands for theset of worlds which are still ‘live alternatives’ after updating the currentcontext with the positive counterpart tolack’. The characteristic entail-ments for linking hold in a restricted set of circumstances, namely inc′.

(21) ∀x∀y have’(x, y) |=M controls’(x, y)

(22) ∀x∀y lack’(x, y) |=M⋂

c′ controls’(x, y)11 Since the differences between Heim’s simpler definition of context update and more

complex implementations such as the one presented in Chierchia (1995a) are irrelevant toour point, we use Heim’s for expository purposes.


Finally, following what is standard in treatments of tense markers, weassume that time intervals that precede or coincide with a reference intervalcan be lexically selected to model inchoative sublexical modality. Theseindices constitute a subset of indices at which the characteristic entailmentsare in force (for those intervals which coincide with the reference interval)or a subset of the complement set of those indices at which the character-istic entailments hold (for those intervals which immediately precede thereference interval).

For our purposes, it is crucial that each of these ways of selectingthe appropriate set of circumstances in which to check the characteristicentailments be independently motivated by well-established analyses ofcorresponding lexical means of encoding the relevant modal information.This means that our analysis does not require introducing arbitrary se-mantic operations simply for the analysis of sublexical modality; it reliesonly on existing tools. We summarize below in Hypothesis 2 our proposalregarding the lexical semantics of verbs. We turn to a more detailed dis-cussion of lexical semantic representations and the role of this hypothesisin solving the linking quandaries of section 2 in the next section.

HYPOTHESIS 2 (Modal Component Hypothesis).The meanings of verbsoften include a sublexical modality component. Technically,

1. The modal semantic structure comprises a list of operators;2. Some sublexical modalities, like their lexical counterparts (may, must

. . . ), require the selection of a Modal Base.

4. SUBLEXICAL MODALITY “ TRANSPARENCY”

4.1. The Modal Transparency Hypothesis

Our second proposal – which we call theModal Transparency Hypothesis(hereafterMTH) – is summarized in the following hypothesis (see section5.1 for a refinement of this hypothesis).

HYPOTHESIS 3 (Modal Transparency Hypothesis, preliminary).Semantically-dependent linking constraints are sensitive only to averb’s non-modal core-situational meaning, not to its (sublexical) modalmodification.

TheMTH can be seen as a revision of the Strong Grounding Hypothesisin the face of the problems which the series of verbs in (4)–(8) present. The


semantic grounding of linking, according to theMTH, only depends onparticular, participant properties of the arguments of thecore-situationalmeaningsassociated with lexical items. If true, theMTH provides corrob-orating evidence in favor of our lexical semantic analysis of the analogiesin (10). The previous section provided a model-theoretic interpretation oftheMTH: characteristic entailments of semantic roles are true of argumentpositions of predicates in a restricted set of circumstances. The restrictionis determined by circumscribing models to this set of circumstances in atleast three ways (a lexically specified Modal Base, the positive counterpartof the updated context, and the selection of time intervals which coincidewith or precede a reference interval). We now explore the consequences ofthis proposed semantics in our statement of linking constraints.

Before delving into representational details, two general caveats areneeded. First, theMTH is a hypothesis regarding what kind of semanticinformation can affect linking. It does not make the stronger claim thatonly semantic information (of the core-situational kind) is relevant to thedetermination of a verb’s subcategorization. We agree with Dowty (1991)that some linking regularities are better treated as pragmatic in nature. Wealso believe that idiosyncratic subcategorization information must some-times be included in the representation of predicators. (See Davis andKoenig (2000) for details on both points.) TheMTH therefore comes intoplay only when lexical semantic informationdoesplay a role. Second, theparticular linking theory within Head-driven Phrase Structure Grammar(hereafterHPSG) we present to illustrate theMTH is only one of a setof linking theories which are compatible with theMTH. The MTH can beincorporated into semantic representations and linking theories proposedwithin several current frameworks, provided their representation of thelexical semantics of verbs is rich enough. In particular, the conceptualstructure representations of Pinker (1989), Jackendoff (1990), or Levinand Rappaport Hovav (1995) within a Principles and Parameters approach,the constructional approach of Goldberg (1995), or the Logical Structureapproach of Van Valin (1993) within Role and Reference grammar can beadapted to incorporate our observations, we believe. Approaches that takea “minimal” semantics as their basis for linking, though, such as those ofGrimshaw (1990), Alsina (1996), and some others, will face difficultiesin accommodating the data in (4)–(8). It is hard to see how they couldaccount for the generalizations we cover in this section given the paucityof semantic information they make available for stating linking rules.

In this section, we examine first the implications of our two hypothesesfor the architecture of lexical semantic representations. We then discusslinking constraints, which provide the interface between these represent-


ations and a predicator’s syntactic dependents. To flesh out our proposalwe need to provide minimal background information on our approach tolinking within HPSG. We keep our introduction to a minimum and focusonly on those aspects ofHPSG or our linking theory which are criticalto understanding our current proposal. (See Davis and Koenig (1997) formore details.)

4.2. Situational Cores and Modal Bases inHPSG

Technically, we factor the representation of the semantic content of pre-dicators into two sets of properties, theSITUATIONAL -CORE and theMODAL -BASE structures. The former represents kinds of participant rela-tions. The latter encodes kinds of evaluations of these relations at variousindices (where indices include both world and time indices, followingMontague (1974)). Each of these sets of properties is represented withan Attribute-Value Matrix orAVM (more precisely, a formula within afeature logic of the kind presented in Carpenter (1992)). The descriptivemetalanguage used in this approach consists of:

• Attributes and values (which can be either atomic or consist of a com-plex of attributes and values), which represent properties and theirnames;• Types (written in italics at the top left of an Attribute-Value Matrix)

that describe kinds of linguistic objects;• Equality statements between values of attributes (indicated with co-

numbered tags such as1).

A (simplified) representation of the semantic content of the verbneed,for example, is shown in Figure 1 (SOA in the figure stands forSTATE-OF-AFFAIRS).

have-sem

SIT-CORE 3

have-relACTOR 1

UNDERGOER2

MODAL -BASE

⟨[deontic-mb

SOA 3

]⟩

Figure 1. Attribute-Value Matrix representation of the lexical semantics ofneed.

The italicized term at the top left of anAVM designates the class ortype of linguistic object described by thatAVM . Thus,have-semdescribesa class of linguistic objects (in this case, a class of semantic structures)– those semantic structures that containhave-rel, denoting a predicative


semantic relation between two arguments – whatever their list of modi-fying modalities.12 It is fundamental to theHPSGapproach that linguisticinformation is organized into a hierarchy of classes of linguistic objects:capturing linguistic generalizations inHPSG consists in grouping the rel-evant linguistic objects under a single type, which contains informationexpressing that generalization. These properties are automatically passeddown to subtypes of that type. This property of type-based classificationsis referred to as inheritance (see Carpenter (1992) among others).

The SITUATIONAL -CORE structure within thehave-semin Figure 1consists of a situation-type name and a set of participant attributes; itrepresents a type of predicative relation between participants, here thehave-rel relation. It is this commonhave-rel relation whose truth in asubset of possible circumstances or at a subset of time indices is evaluated,as required by the semantics of theMODAL -BASE list of operators. Sim-ilarly, the situational cores ofgive, send, owe, and so on, all inherit froma common type which representscause to possess, a particular kind ofpredicative relation between participants. This commoncause-possess-relrelation is evaluated in a set of worlds, as specified by the modal semanticproperties concurrently encoded in the lexical entries of those verbs.

The MODAL -BASE structure in Figure 1 consists of a list of partiallyscoped operators; it represents the restrictions of the set of possible cir-cumstances or time indices at which core-situational predicative relationsare evaluated. In the semantics ofneedin Figure 1, this list has just onemember. Its type,deontic-mb, indicates the criteria for the selection of therelevant set of circumstances in which the relation inSIT-CORE obtains.Finally, the proper interaction of the two components is accomplished bystructure-sharing (see tag3 in Figure 1, for instance). Readers not familiarwith the formalism underlying Typed Feature Structure systems can thinkof such co-numbered tags as identical variables in traditional First-OrderPredicate Calculus. Structure-sharing ensures that the modal base structureapplies to thehave-relin Figure 1.

12 For mnemonic purposes, we adopt the following naming convention. Lexical predic-ative semantic relations that constitute situational cores are suffixed withrel to stress theirrelational character; lexical semantic structures that comprise both a situational core anda list of modal operators are suffixed withsem. Furthermore, in figures, lexical semanticstructures often share for ease of exposition the non-suffix part of their names with thesituational core relation they include. Thus, in Figure 1 the type of the overall semanticstructure ishave-semsince the core situation is of typehave-rel. Angle brackets representattribute values that consist of lists of elements.


We now turn to a more detailed discussion of each component ofthe lexico-semantic structures of situation-denoting predicators. Figure 2illustrates further our representation of situational cores.13

act-und-relACTOR contentUNDERGOER nom-obj

Figure 2. TheACT-UND-REL situational core

The typeact-und-relin the figure denotes the class of core-situationallexical semantic relations involving an actor and an undergoer role, whichappear as attributes within feature structures of this type. The values ofthese attributes are structure-shared with the semantic content of the XPsthat realize these arguments.Act-und-rel is the class of relations whichcovers the core-situational semantic content of verbs such asbuild, destroyand others. Each of these verbs denotes a relation that is a subtype oftheact-und-relrelation. Intuitively, all building and destroying events areinstances of the more general class of events that contain both actor andundergoer participants.

Since linguistic objects are organized in a hierarchy of types, and prop-erties that hold of a supertype also hold of all its subtypes, attributes areinherited by subtypes of the supertype that licenses them. So, the semanticcontent ofdestroy, which is a subtype ofact-und-rel, inherits bothACTOR

andUNDERGOERattributes. The relationact-und-relitself can be definedas a subtype ofact-relandund-rel. Each of these relations licenses a singlesemantic role,ACTOR and UNDERGOER respectively. The relationact-und-rel, as the intersection of these two classes of relations, inherits bothattributes, as represented in Figure 3. By factoring semantic attributes intodifferent relation types we can straightforwardly represent cross-cuttingsemantic similarities.Laugh-reldenotes a subtype ofact-rel which is nota subtype ofund-rel. Die-rel denotes a subtype ofund-rel which is nota subtype ofact-rel. Destroy-rel denotes a subtype of bothact-rel andund-rel.14

The use of an inheritance hierarchy over semantic relations allows usto distinguish the meanings of verbs without having to rely on a structural

13 We borrow the termsACTOR andUNDERGOERfrom Foley and Van Valin (1984). Ourusage of these terms, though inspired by their work, is different. See our discussion belowfor our definition of these attributes. The types of the values ofACTOR andUNDERGOER

arecontent, which, roughly, covers all semantic types, including both entities and state-of-affairs, andnom-obj, which only covers entities. They constitute the most general types theinstantiations of these arguments can take.

14 We use dashed lines in the figure to indicate that there are intermediate types betweenlaugh-relandact-rel that are not represented in the diagram.


[act-relACTOR

[ ]] [und-relUNDERGOER

[ ]]

act-und-relACTOR

[ ]UNDERGOER

[ ]

laugh-rel have-rel destroy-rel die-rel

Figure 3. A multidimensional classification of semantic relations.

difference in their lexical semantic representations. Consider the verbsgiveand hand, whose lexical semantic representations might have a similarstructure, as suggested by a reviewer and shown in Figure 4. Both, afterall, describe (for most speakers) causing of possession, and as such includepredicative semantic relations which are subtypes ofcause-possess-rel. Tomodel the obvious semantic difference between the two verbs, we canhave the semantic relation included in each verb describe different sub-types of this relation, as shown in Figure 4. Each verb includes a differentpredicative semantic relation,give-relandhand-relrespectively, but thesetwo relations are subtypes ofcause-possess-rel, from which they inheritpart of their semantic structure.15 The same approach applies to the dif-ference between the semantic contents of verbs such aschargeor take:the common part of their meaning is encoded through a particular type ofcore-situational meaning and/or overall lexical semantic content which themore specific lexical semantics of both verbs inherits.

Having outlined a way to represent the situational core and modalbase components inHPSG, we turn next to how the attributes within situ-ational core relations (e.g.,ACTOR and UNDERGOER) are determined.We then turn to the “transparency” of sublexical modality, that is, in-stances in which verbs with different semantics have the same linkingpattern and show that these verbs in fact have a common linking-relevantcore-situational meaning.

15 To encode the necessary presence of an “incorporated” instrument forhand, two pos-sibilities suggest themselves. We can rely on the model-theoretic interpretation ofhand-relto restrict models for English to those in which the relation namehand-rel describes aclass of situations in which hands are used as instruments. Alternatively – probably a moresatisfying solution – we can add an additionaluse-rellexical semantic relation in the lexicalsemantic structure ofhandas proposed for instruments in general in Koenig and Davis (toappear). Since this issue is orthogonal to our point, we do not pursue it here.


cause-possess-relACTOR

UNDERGOER 1

SOA

SIT-CORE

have-relACTOR 1

UNDERGOER

give-rel hand-rel

Figure 4. The common semantic structure ofgiveandhand.

4.3. Semantic Grounding

To semantically ground the arguments of our lexical semantic structures,we define a set of semantic role attributes and a set of characteristic parti-cipant entailments (for the most part reflecting those suggested by Dowty(1991) and Wechsler (1995b)). Each semantic role attribute correspondsto a participant role, and the relationship between a semantic role attributeand the participant role it corresponds to is not arbitrary but depends onsome entailment that holds of any participant playing that role. Each se-mantic role attribute is associated with a set of characteristic entailmentsand obeys the condition informally stated in (23).

(23) ATTRIBUTE-TO-ENTAILMENT CONDITION (informal version)The referent of the value of a semantic role attributeA bears at leastone of the characteristic entailments associated withA.

Some of the relevant attributes and their characteristic entailmentstogether with the most general semantic predicative relations which intro-duce them are listed in Table 2. Furthermore, each characteristic entailmentof a semantic role attribute can always be associated with a most generalpredicative semantic relation of which the semantic relations of specificverbs are subkinds. For example,notion-rel (the predicative semantic re-lation of which the semantic relations of verbs such asbelieve, see, . . . aresubkinds) specifies theACTOR attribute on the basis of an entailment thatholds of believers and seers: they have a notion of the referent of theirobject NP. We discuss this point as well as ways in which the disjunctionof semantic entailments in Table 2 can be eliminated in Davis and Koenig


TABLE II

Semantic roles and characteristic semantic entailments

Relation Licensessemantic roleattribute(s)

Characteristic entailments

act-rel ACTOR Causally affects or influences other parti-cipant(s) or event(s);

Volitionally involved in event;

Has a notion or perception of other parti-cipant(s) in event;

Possesses an entity.

und-rel UNDERGOER Causally affected or influenced by anotherparticipant;

Undergoes a change of state;

Is an incremental theme;

Possessed by entity.

soa-rel SOA Resulting state of affairs;

Circumstance or Entity perceived or con-ceived of by another participant;

Circumstance aspectually or temporally de-limited by the relation.

fig-grnd-rel FIGURE Entity located with respect to another parti-cipant;

Moves with respect to another participant;

Contains or constitutes another participant;

GROUND Entity with respect to which another entity islocated;

Trajectory along which another participantmoves;

Is contained by or part of another participant.

(2000) and Koenig and Davis (to appear). This last issue is orthogonal toour main point and we do not pursue it here.

The lattice structure on the hierarchy of predicative semantic relationsprovides two benefits to our representation of semantic attributes. First, theunique model-theoretic interpretation of supertypes common to two verbs– say,giveandhandor chargeandtake– ensures that the values of theirsemantic attributes bear the appropriate identical characteristic entailments(such as being the initiator of the event for theACTOR attribute, being theeffect of a causal situation for theSOA attribute, and so forth). But differ-ent subtypes of the common core-situational supertype and/or the overall


lexical semantic structure are associated with each verb. The idiosyncraticproperties of the situations described by each verb and of the entities thatparticipate in them follow from the differences in model-theoretic inter-pretations of these subtypes (give-rel vs. cause-possess-rel, for example).Many fine-grained semantic differences among the properties borne bysituation participants are thus modeled through the organization of pre-dicative semantic relations in a (semi)-lattice of types and the inheritancestructure defined over this lattice. Second, the lattice structure allows usto represent the fact that more than one characteristic entailment might beborne by the referent of the value of a single semantic role. Consider againthe verbbuild. We can represent the fact that builders both affect anotherparticipant and are volitionally involved in the event through the inher-itance network of predicative semantic relations diagrammed in Figure5.

[act-relACTOR

[ ]]

cause-rel volit-rel

cause-volit-rel

build-rel

Figure 5. Representing multiple characteristic entailments of participant roles in a lexicalsemantic network.

The typecause-reldenotes causal events and requires the value of itsACTOR attribute to denote an entity that causally affects another entity; thetypevolit-rel denotes events in which the participant which is the referentof the value of theACTOR attribute acts volitionally. By inheritance,cause-volit-rel and its subtypebuild-rel include anACTOR attribute whose value’sreferent must volitionally causally affect another entity.

Our hypothesis is that the characteristic entailments that underlie thelexical semantic structures we just presented constitute the appropriatesemantic grounding of linking constraints by dint of the following twoconditions.

• ATTRIBUTE-TO-ENTAILMENT CONDITION: If a semantic relation in-cludes a semantic attributeA, the referent of the value ofA must


bear at least one of the characteristic entailments appropriate for thatrelation among the entailments listed in Table 2.

• SEMANTIC SUBTYPE CONDITION: If a semantically-sensitive linkingconstraint links the attribute of a predicative semantic relation of typet to a particular syntactic function, all predicators whose predicativesemantic relations are subtypes oft obey the same constraint.

The truth of theMTH does not depend on either condition and otherlinking theories with which theMTH is compatible would undoubtedlyalter the formulation of both conditions. But the first condition ensuresa clear model-theoretic grounding of our lexical semantic representationsby requiring semantic attributes to denote situation participants whichbear the appropriate properties. The second condition guarantees thatpredicators that share a common core-situational semantics (i.e., whosecore-situational semantics inherit from a common type) link their ar-guments identically (modulo true idiosyncrasies of subcategorization).Together, they constitute our current best hypothesis regarding the degreeto which (core-situational) participant properties determine linking. TheSemantic Subtype Condition might appear to be too strong, as a reviewersuggested, since it seems to run afoul of verbs whose lexical semantics aresometimes claimed to be identical, but which link their arguments differ-ently, such asbuyandsell, or fear andfrighten. So as not to wander fromthis section’s main point (that non-core-situational semantic information isnot relevant to linking), we defer a full discussion of this issue until Section5.2. For now, we return to the representation of the modality component inour lexical semantic structures.

4.4. Types of Modal Bases

Recall from figure 4.2 that we model the distinction between situationalcores and modal operators by introducing into our semantic repres-entationsMODAL -BASE attribute-value structures whose state-of-affairsarguments are the core-situational meaning. Such a representation is de-signed to reflect our contention that the sublexical modal structure presentin predicators evaluates the participant relations described by their core-situational structures at various world or time indices. We now illustratethe resulting lexical semantics for some other verbs.

In Figure 6 is a representation of the lexical semantics ofprom-ise, as used in (24). It represents the lexical semantics ofpromise as


cause-possess-relwhosecause-possess-relstate-of-affairs is modified bya deonticMODAL -BASE operator.16

(24) Joan promised Bill $10.1 2 4

The deontic modal base operator that modifies the causing event se-lects a modal base of worlds in which the subject’s referent fulfills thepromise. If Joan promises Bill $10, she causes Bill to have $10 in allcircumstances in which she fulfills her promises. Thecond-satis-mbtype,a subtype ofdeontic-mb, indicates that the Modal Base consists of thosecircumstances in which the person performing the speech act denoted bythe verb satisfies the conditions of satisfaction associated with it, in thesense of Searle (1969) or Searle and Vanderveken (1985). In the case ofFigure 6, this means the set of circumstances in which the person carriesout her promises.

promise-sem∧ cause-possess-sem

SIT-CORE 3

cause-possess-relACTOR 1

UNDERGOER 2

SOA

SIT-CORE

have-relACTOR 2

UNDERGOER 4

MODAL -BASE

⟨[deontic-mb∧ condit-satis-mb

SOA 3

]⟩

Figure 6. The lexical semantic representation ofpromise.

Figure 7 represents the lexical semantics ofneglect(in the sense ofneglect to eat) illustrated in (25), as a subtype ofcause-act-relmodifiedby negation and deonticMODAL -BASE operators unscoped with respect toeach other. The need to include two or more unscoped modality operators

16 We adapt Pinker’s (op.cit.) analysis of the semantics of ditransitive verbs here by pro-posing a lexical semantic representation which can be paraphrased byx causes y to possessz thereby affecting y. See Koenig and Davis (to appear) for a slightly different proposalregarding the lexical semantic representation of ditransitives and slightly modified linkingconstraints. Sincepromise-semis a subtype ofcause-possess-sem, the conjunction of thetwo typespromise-sem∧ cause-possess-semis promise-sem. We redundantly include inthe figure the generalcause-possess-semtype of the overall lexical semantic structure aswell as its more specific subtypepromise-semfor ease of exposition. The same is true ofour concurrent mention of thedeontic-mbtype of Modal Base and its subtypecondit-satis-mb. Specific properties of promising events attach to thepromise-semandcondit-satis-mbtypes, of course.


to model the modal component of the semantics ofneglectand severalother verbs motivates our use of a list ofAVM structures as the value of theattributeMODAL -BASE. (See Copestake et al. (1997) for the technical de-tails of partially scoped lists of semantic relations/operators inHPSG.) Eachoperator in Figure 7 evaluates the same participant relation at different setsof indices. Thus, the negation operator ofneglectevaluates the causal actat the complement set of the set of worlds in which the denotatum of thepositive cause-act-relrelation holds; the deonticMODAL -BASE operatorevaluates the same relation at the set of worlds in which people fullfil theirobligations.

(25) She neglected to eat.1 3

neglect-sem∧ cause-act-sem

SIT-CORE 3

cause-act-relACTOR 1

SOA

[SIT-CORE

[act-relACTOR 1

]]

MODAL -BASE

⟨[neg-mb

SOA 3

],

[deontic-mb

SOA 3

]⟩

Figure 7. The lexical semantic representation ofneglect.

Finally, Figure 8 represents the lexical semantics ofcharge, as used in(26). Its meaning is analyzed as a subtype ofcause-possess-relwhose em-beddedhave-relstate-of-affairs is modified by a negation operator.Chargealso involves a second, bouleticMODAL -BASE operator, which modifiesthe overall causing event. This operator selects a Modal Base of worlds inwhich the causer’s desires are fulfilled. Bouletic Modal Bases are a subtypeof energetic Modal Bases. The selected circumstances are not only thosein which the inherent resulting consequences of the event are reached, butthese consequences are intended by the actor participant in the situation.If Joan charges Bill $10, she causes Bill to have $10 less in all circum-stances in which her desires are met. The lexical semantic representationof Figure 8 can, thus, be paraphrased byone entity performed an act withthe intention of causing another not to have a third entity.

(26) Joan charged Bill $10.1 2 4

In contrast to the modal operators in the lexical semantics ofneglect,those in the semantics ofchargemodify two different participant relations.


charge-sem∧ cause-possess-sem

SIT-CORE 3


UNDERGOER 2

SOA

have-sem

SIT-CORE 5

have-relACTOR 2

UNDERGOER 4

MODAL -BASE

⟨[neg-mb

SOA 5

]⟩

MODAL -BASE

⟨[bouletic-mb

SOA 3

]⟩

Figure 8. The lexical semantic representation ofcharge.

The bouleticMODAL -BASE operator evaluates the transfer of possession atworlds in which people fulfill their desires, whereas the negation operatorevaluates the resulting possession state at the set of worlds remaining afterhaving updated the current information state with the (positive)have-rel.We must therefore ensure that the core situation that the bouleticMODAL -BASE operator evaluates at worlds corresponding to the actor’s desires isa situation in which the undergoer ends up without the money. Figure 8models this requirement by including in the embedded effectSOA of thesituational core ofchargeboth a situational core and a negativeMODAL -BASE operator structure. In other words, our analysis of the situational coreof chargecould be paraphrased asact with the intention of causing to lack.

Figure 9 summarizes the subtypes of Modal Bases we have discussedthus far.17

4.5. Linking Constraints on Situational Cores

We now illustrate the use of this factored representation of the semantics ofpredicators in the statement of linking constraints and show how theMTH

solves the problems discussed in section 2, thus providing independentmotivation for the bifurcation of lexical semantic information for which weargue in Section 3. Our basic idea is simple: linking constraints (implemen-ted as constraints on predicator classes) provide partial descriptions of themapping between lexical semantic representations of situational cores andthe semantic content of subcategorized dependents. Since entailments ofthe denotata of situational-core semantic structures are the sole (semantic)

17 The typeculminative-mbrefers to the non-bouletic subtype of energetic Modal Basesof which the Modal Base ofdefyis an example. We also include in the figure theinchoative-mbsubtype, which we allude to but do not discuss in detail.


modal-base

neg-mb inchoative-mb irrealis-mb

cond-satis-mb energetic-mb

bouletic-mb culminative-mb

Figure 9. The hierarchy of Modal Base types.

determinants of linking, we predict the shared linking pattern within eachset of verbs in examples (4)–(8) (see Van Valin (1993) for an early proposalin this direction). We will not go into the details of our linking theorywithin HPSGin this paper, but refer the reader to Davis (1996) and Davisand Koenig (2000) for details. Its fundamentals should be clear from ourfew examples, however. We first give the linking constraints responsiblefor the realization ofACTOR as subject andUNDERGOER as object, inFigures 10 and 11.18

act-vb

CONTENT

NUCLEUS

act-sem

SIT-CORE

[act-relACTOR 1

]MODAL -BASE

ARG-ST⟨NP: 1 , . . .

⟩

Figure 10. Theact-vblinking constraint

Tags following colons in the figures denote the semantic content ofa subcategorized element. (InHPSG jargon, these tags denote the valuesof the NUCLEUS.) Thus, NP:1 in Figure 10 describes the syntactic andsemantic information of the subject NP whose non-quantificational se-mantic content (that is, roughly, the specification of its referential index) isidentical to the value of theACTOR attribute. This constraint is responsiblefor the mapping of actor-like arguments to the subjects of active verbs.NP:1 in Figure 11 describes the syntactic and semantic information of the

18 CONTENT in HPSG is the attribute that gathers the semantics of words and phrases;NUCLEUS represents the non-quantificational part of this semantics;ARG-ST is the list ofpotential subcategorized dependents of a word or phrase.HPSG-savvy readers will notethat we have made several simplifications in the “feature geometry” of the description ofsigns for expository purposes.


und-vb

CONTENT

NUCLEUS

und-sem

SIT-CORE

[und-relUNDERGOER 1

]MODAL -BASE

ARG-ST⟨. . . , NP: 1 (,XP . . . )

⟩

Figure 11. Theund-vblinking constraint.

object NP whose non-quantificational semantic content is identical to thevalue of theUNDERGOERattribute. This constraint – that theUNDERGOER

argument corresponds to the last NP on theARG-ST list – is responsiblefor the mapping of undergoer-like arguments to the objects of active trans-itive verbs. (XP in the figure stands for any non-nominal dependent; allmembers of theARG-ST list which precedes the mentioned NP must benominal as well.)19 The (simplified) lexical structure of verbs such asseewhich inherit from both of these classes is represented in Figure 12.20

see-vb

CONTENT

NUCLEUS

SIT-CORE

see-relACTOR 1

UNDERGOER 2

MODAL -BASE

ARG-ST⟨NP: 1 , NP: 2

⟩

Figure 12. A simplified representation of the lexical entry ofsee.

Importantly, theMODAL -BASE semantic structure need not be spe-cified in the definitions of theact-vbandund-vbverb classes; the linkingconstraints they encode describe verbs denoting relations that include anactor-like or undergoer-like participant, whatever sublexical modality isspecified. The constraints thus apply to positive verbs of possession such ashavewhich have an emptyMODAL -BASE list, but also to modally modifiedverbs such asneedor lack. All verbs that include anACTOR attribute intheir core situational semantics link it to the first element of theARG-ST

19 The same constraint maps the value of theUNDERGOERattribute of intransitive verbsto the subject position of verbs that lack anACTOR in their situational core, since it statesthat undergoers correspond to an NP on theARG-ST list without indicating its order on thelist, except that it precedes non-nominal dependents.

20 The details of how lexical entries license the realization of dependents correspondingto members of theARG-ST list is not germane to the focus of this paper. Suffice it to saythat it is regulated by a general Valence Principle which bears similarities to theθ-criterionand Extended Projection Principle of the Principles and Parameters framework (Chomsky(1981)), to the Biuniqueness condition of Lexical-Functional Grammar (Bresnan (1982c)),or to the notion of functional application in Categorial Grammar.


list. These linking classes thus provides support for theMTH. Similarly,all verbs that include anUNDERGOERattribute in their core situational se-mantics link it to the last NP element of theARG-ST list. Hence, bothact-vbandund-vblinking constraints apply equally tohave, need, andlack. This“transparency” of theMODAL -BASE structure translates semantically intothe kind of restrictions on the sets of circumstances in which characteristicentailments hold upon which Section 3 focuses.

The English ditransitive verb class diagrammed in Figure 13 illustratesthe same point. Again, the definition leaves unspecified the modality op-erator values; this class can subsume any verb whose situational coredenotes events of causing to possess (verbs whose core-situational se-mantics is of typecause-possess-reland whose embedded state-of-affairscore-situational relation is of typehave-rel). It thus applies topromiseandchargeas well as to the more prototypicalgive. Our strategy shouldbe clear from these few examples; the entailments that ground linkingconstraints are those characteristic of particular core-situational relations(say,have-rel, cause-possess-rel, . . . ) irrespective of the modal base alsolexically encoded by the verb. The puzzle presented by the series of verbsin (4)–(8) has thus been dissipated; the relevant characteristic entailmentshold of each verb in a serieswithin a modally restricted set of circum-stances. Furthermore, we have answered the question of what makes thesets of verbs in a series a natural class; they all share a common situationalcore. They belong to a common category of relations between situationparticipants and differ only in their modal modification; that is, at whichtime and world indices these relations are evaluated.

ditrans-vb

CONTENT

NUCLEUS

SIT-CORE

cause-possession-rel

ACTOR 1

UNDERGOER 2

SOA

SIT-CORE

have-rel

ACTOR 2

UNDERGOER 3

MODAL -BASE

ARG-ST

⟨NP: 1 , NP: 2 , NP: 3

⟩

Figure 13. Theditrans-vblinking constraint.

The account of the series of verbs in (4)–(8) that we provide in thissection relies on a contrast between two kinds of semantic informationwhich is reminiscent of Grimshaw’s distinction between grammaticallyrelevant and grammatically irrelevant semantic information (see Grimshaw(1993)), as Beth Levin has pointed out to us. Both approaches motivate a


partition of lexical semantic information on the basis of a metagrammat-ical constraint (Jackendoff’s Grammatical Constraint Principle, althoughGrimshaw does not explicitly mention the principle). Although we agreewith the general hypothesis put forth in Pinker (1989) and Grimshaw(1993) that only a subset of semantic distinctions are ever relevant to link-ing, we leave open the possibility that some semantic distinctions whichinfluence linking are not structural in nature; that is, not all can be modeledby the structure of lexical semantic representations. Some distinctionsmight be purely model-theoretic or a matter of “cognitive construal”; theymust refer to participant entailments in appropriate models for English.The contrast between ballistic (e.g.,throw) and entrained (e.g.,pull) mo-tion events provides a possible example of such a non-structural semanticdistinction. Only the former allow a ditransitive alternant with a potentialrecipient as first object (Pinker (1989)). This involves a more fine-graineddiscrimination between the properties of the situation types described bythe two classes of verbs than thematic roles provide, for example. Bothclasses would plausibly have the same set of thematic roles, and the samekind of causal structure (one participant causes another to move).21 In gen-eral, the kinds of lexical semantic representations we use in this previoussection afford us two means of representing semantic information: struc-tural, through a geometrically arranged semantic attribute-value structure,and model-theoretic, through the arrangement of relations into a (semi-)lattice corresponding to subclass-superclass relations among describedsituations. Both are needed, we believe, to adequately model linkingregularities.

Furthermore, although we believe that linking is insensitive to the sub-lexical modality which lexical entries may encode (but see the next sectionfor a caveat), we do not believe it is entirely grammatically irrelevant. Neg-ative sublexical modalities seem to be relevant to the licensing of negativepolarity items. Compare (27a) to (27b) and (28a) to (28b).

(27) a.∗Masha believes he did anything.

b. Masha doubts he did anything.

(28) a.∗Masha forced him to do anything.

21 Of course, it is always possible that what some scholars take to be a non-structuraldistinction is structural in another semantic metalanguage representation. In fact, Krifka(to appear) suggests that the distinction between ballistic and entrained motion is structuralafter all. Our point still remains. We are skeptical that all verb class sensitivity gracefullyreduces to structural semantic distinctions.


b. Masha forbade him to do anything.

Similarly, inchoative sublexical modalities have been argued to be crit-ical in licensing durational PPs and auxiliary selection in some languages(cf. Dowty (1979) on the former and Van Valin (1990) on the latter, butsee Levin and Rappaport Hovav (1995) for a different view on auxiliaryselection). The issues raised by these phenomena are far from resolved, butthey suggest that sublexical modalities might very well be grammaticallyrelevant in areas other than linking.

5. REMAINING ISSUES

5.1. Apparent Exceptions to Modal Transparency

Although our proposal is independently motivated semantically and solvesthe basic problem we raised in section 2, some data seem troublesome forthe Modal Transparency Hypothesis. Here we examine apparent violationsof the MTH relating to PP-complements of predicators. They point to theneed to limit the range of theMTH to linking of direct verbal arguments.Put another way, the prepositional complements that are appropriate witha verb do sometimes depend on modality information within that verb, butas for the linking constraints that target direct arguments we discussed inthe previous section, this information is irrelevant. As we will show, theissue is rather complex (many subcases must be distinguished). Since italso illustrates the contrast betweenSIT-COREandMODAL -BASE semanticstructures in non-verbal predicators, our analysis will be rather detailed.

Let’s first compare the verbsgive and take in (29), andpersuadeanddissuadein (30).

(29) a. Helen gave a book to Bill.

b. Helen took a book from Bill.

(30) a. Burns persuaded Smithers to fire Simpson.

b. Burns dissuaded Smithers from firing Simpson.

The selection ofto or fromseems to depend on whether Bill has or doesnot have the book at the end, or whether Smithers actually fires Simpson.Contraour Modal Transparency Hypothesis, the lexical identity of the PPcomplement seems to depend on the polarity of a component situation in


the situation denoted by the main verb. If the resulting state of the actionis one of Bill’s ownership of the book, then the PP is headed byto. If, onthe other hand, the resulting state is one of Bill’snon-ownership of thebook, then the PP is headed byfrom. The selection of the head of the PPcorrelates with the polarity of the resulting state.

Despite appearences, cases such as (29) do not contravene theMTH, aswe now show. We assume the analysis of semantically potent prepositionspresented in Jackendoff (1983), Gawron (1986) and Wechsler (1995a). Inthis approach prepositions such asto andfromcontribute semantic inform-ation in sentences (29); roughly, they describe possession (or receipt) andlack of possession (or loss) respectively. Because the modal informationis contributed by the respective PPs, the linking constraints applying tomonotransitivegive and takestill do not need to refer to it. As shown inFigure 14, the relevant constraints for this alternant of these verbs are justthose associated with its supertypesact-vbandund-vb. The semantics ofthe possession-related uses ofto andfrom are depicted in Figures 15a and15b.

cause-possess-vb

CONTENT

NUCLEUS

SIT-CORE


UNDERGOER 2

SOA 3

ARG-ST⟨NP:1 , NP:2 , (PP:3 )

⟩

Figure 14. The linking of monotransitivecause-possess-vb.

SIT-CORE

have-relACTOR

UNDERGOER

MODAL -BASE 〈〉

(a) To

SIT-CORE 1

have-relACTOR

UNDERGOER

MODAL -BASE

⟨[neg-mbSOA-ARG 1

]⟩

(b) From

Figure 15. The semantics of possessiveto andfrom.

Which preposition heads the PP in Figure 14 need not be specified in thelinking pattern; the semantics ofto or from is unified with the value of theverb’sSOA, and the kind of resulting state semantically selected bygiveortakerestricts the range of prepositions with compatible semantics.Give in(29a) selects a positive possession relation; in English among prepositions


only to can encode such a relation. Only a PP complement headed bytocan therefore unify with the lexical semantic structure ofgive. A PP headedby from would conflict with the semantics of the PP argument ofgive,sincefrom encodes a negative possession relation (i.e. one paraphrasableby lack). The same reasoning ensures that only a PP headed byfrom cancombine withtake, but not one headed byto. Therefore, nothing needs tobe stated within thecause-possess-vbclass as to the identity of the PP’shead. We can infer it from the general requirement that the PP denotesa possession relation and the lexical semantics of prepositions such astoor from and caused-possession verbs with which they combine. The dis-tinction stems from the different modal versions of a possession relationencoded by the prepositions, and languages can differ as to the semanticsof such prepositions. Frenchà in (31), for example, can denote either posit-ive or negative resulting states of ownership, at least when combining withverbs denoting caused-possession relations.

(31) a. Marie donnera deux francs à Paul.

Marie give.FUT two francs to Paul

‘Marie will give two francs to Paul.’

b. Marie prendra deux francs à Paul.

Marie take.FUT two francs to Paul

‘Marie will take two francs from Paul.’

In the case ofdissuade, prevent, and similar verbs, there is no physicalpath or possession to represent, and iffromserves to denote a source it is ametaphorical one.22 These two verbs contrast withforbid, which does takean infinitiveVP complement likeforce. Thus, the presence or absence of aPP may be a lexically-specified fact about the subcategorizations of theseverbs. But, the identity of this PP’s lexical head need not be specified inthe verb class. We can adopt a similar solution to the one we suggestedabove for possessive uses ofto andfrom. The verb class specifies that itsmembers take a prepositional object which is coindexed with a subpartof the situational core of its lexical semantic structure (in this case, theact one is persuaded to perform or one is forbidden from performing), butdoes not mention the modality associated with this subpart. The modality

22 It is clearly less than satisfying that we are led to posit several different senses offrom: one for physical motion, one for possession, and one for its use with verbs such asdissuadeandprevent. The latter use offrom is not accidental, and one can imagine accountsthat unify this sense with the motion one in terms of metaphorical notions, but we will leavethis issue unresolved.


is contributed by the preposition encoding this subpart of the semanticstructure (the empty list forto and aneg-mboperator forfrom).

The situation is more complex for the conative construction illustratedin (32), which, as one reviewer suggests, also involves a PP which con-tributes modality information. Roughly, sentence (32) states that Marc cutthe bread in all circumstances in which the act was continued until its nat-ural completion (see Dowty’s (1979) notion of inertia worlds and Portner(1998) for a recent explication of the concept within a Kratzer-style theoryof modality).

(32) Marc cut at the bread.

If we assume again thatat is semantically potent in (32), liketo andfrom, we can simply state that the semantics ofat contributes this modalityrather than the linking-related verb class to whichcut belongs when usedas in (32). The linking-related verb class itself does not mention any modalsemantics and therefore its lexical semantic structure is identical to that ofthe transitive variant of its members. This is problematic if theARG-ST ofthe class merely specifies that the undergoer is idiosyncratically linked toa PP. It would wrongly predict the grammaticality of (33) (at least if weassume that one variant ofof is semantically empty).

(33) ∗Marc cut of the bread.

To exclude (33), the verb class which specifies the linking constraintsspecific to the conative diathesis must additionally mention the identity ofthe PP’s lexical head (it must beat). Since all entries forat other thanthe one illustrated by (32) have a semantics incompatible with that of theverbs targeted by the linking class, the presence of the appropriate modalinformation in the resulting semantics for VP such ascut at the breadisensured.

The situation is potentially even more troublesome for the strong ver-sion of theMTH we stated at the beginning of section 4 when consideringthe contrast between verbs likegiveanddeprive. The basic generalizationis that the theme of “negative” causative verbs is realized as a PP headedby of, not as a second object (cf. alsorob of, strip of, and so forth, the classof “removal” verbs in Foley and Van Valin (1984)).

(34) a. Jean gave him a lift ticket.

b. Jean deprived him of a lift ticket.


The analyses we propose for prepositions such asto, from, or even theone we have proposed for the conative use ofat do not apply in this case.The prepositional phrase alternates with a secondary object NP comple-ment (compare the encoding of the theme argument in (34a) and (34b)).We cannot therefore posit a single linking class covering both cases, sincethe syntactic category of the linked elements on theARG-ST lists of the twoverbs differs. One verb must include an NP as its thirdARG-ST element,the other a PP. Moreover, we cannot leave this category information unspe-cified and assume that some Canonical Realization Principle is responsiblefor filling in that information (see Grimshaw (1981), Pesetsky (1982), orLangacker (1987)). The semantic types of the denotata of the NPa liftticketand the PPof a lift ticketare identical; they both are objects and wewould therefore expect both complements to be nominal in nature. Further-more, as was the case for conative uses ofat, we cannot simply assume, aswe did for possessive uses ofto andfrom, that the modality included in theresultant state of ownership relation is contributed by the preposition andno mention of the prepositional phrase’s head is required in the descrip-tion of the verb class. Otherwise we would predict the grammaticality ofsentence (35).

(35) ∗Jean deprived him from a lift ticket.

We must indicate the identity of the prepositional phrase’s head in thecase of “negative” possessional verbs (it must beof) so as to block (35).But the situation might be worse than what is the case for the conativealternation. Since the specification that the PP’s lexical head isof mustbe restricted to verbs likedeprive, that is verbs which can be paraphrasedascause not to have, we cannot leave out of the description of the verbclass itself the mention of a modal component, if we wish to capture thecommon semantics of “negative” possessional verbs. The fact that we needto restrict the range of the verb class through the inclusion of a modalcomponent, would then suggest that modal informationcanappear in thedescription of linking classes to ensure the proper relation of semanticarguments to prepositional phrases. The representation of thecause-not-possess-vbclass in Figure 16 illustrates. The fact that a PPof encodes thetheme argument of “negative” possessional verbs seems idiosyncratic, asit does not apply to the ditransitivechargeandcost, with semantics verymuch like those ofdepriveand rob. “Negative” possessional verbs thusresemble the many verbs which make idiosyncratic specifications abouttheir PP complements (abide by, come by– in the obtain sense of thephrase –skimp on, grow on– in the incrementally impress sense). Thatthe MTH does not cover truly syntactically idiosyncratic verbs is perhapsto be expected.


cause-not-possess-vb

CONTENT

NUCLEUS

SIT-CORE

caused-possess-rel

ACTOR 1

UNDERGOER 2

SOA

SIT-CORE 4

poss-rel

ACTOR 2

UNDERGOER 3

MODAL -BASE

⟨[neg-mb

SOA 4

]⟩

ARG-ST

⟨NP:1 , NP:2 , (PPof : 3 )

⟩

Figure 16. Thecause-not-poss-vblinking class

This extended discussion of the various ways in which the linking ofsemantic arguments to prepositional phrases can be sensitive to modalinformation suggests the need to weaken our Modal Transparency Hypo-thesis. In particular, we must slightly revise ourMTH, since the linkingproperties ofdeprivedo seem to require reference to a negative modaloperator. The hypothesis now holds only of direct grammatical functions,wheredirect stands for subject, object, or secondary object. It is statedbelow.

HYPOTHESIS 4 (Modal Transparency Hypothesis, revised).Semantically-dependent linking constraints for direct grammatical functions are onlysensitive to a verb’s non-modal core-situational meaning, not to its(sublexical) modal modification.

5.2. Can the Semantic Subtype Condition be Maintained?

As alluded to in section 4.3, the Semantic Subtype Condition (hereafterSSC), repeated below as (36), might appear to be too strong.

(36) SEMANTIC SUBTYPE CONDITION: If a semantically-sensitive link-ing constraint links the attribute of a predicative semantic relationof type t to a particular syntactic function, all predicators whosepredicative semantic relations are subtypes oft obey the sameconstraint.

As one reviewer suggests, the different linking behavior of semanticdoublets such asbuy andsell seems to violate it. The issue is somewhattangential to the main point of our paper – the existence of a sublexicalmodality component in the lexical semantics of predicators – but, as thisreviewer points out, if this objection is valid, it raises doubts as to the


validity of the MTH. If the MTH is correct, then any difference in linkingbetween the two members of a doublet would have to be attributed toa difference in their situational cores, or to nonsemantic factors. And ifwe claim that the difference arises from differing situational cores, whatcould motivate such a distinction, given the hypothesis that the two verbs’semantics are (essentially) identical? We therefore discuss this objectionin some detail in this section. We concentrate on verbs of exchange, verbsthat participate in thespray/loadalternation, and pairs of verbs that denotesituations involving psychological states, such asfear/frighten.

First, let’s considerbuyandsell, two verbs that Dowty (1991) adducesin favor of a weaker account of argument selection that relies on a nu-merical comparison of characteristic entailments (proto-properties). Oneargument that such doublets falsify ourSSC goes as follows. The linkingconstraint that maps the buyer role to the subject position ofbuydoes notapply to the buyer participant of situations denoted bysell, as illustrated in(37).

(37) a. Jim bought a book from Susan.

b. Susan sold a book to Jim.

But, ex hypothesi, the two verbs have identical meanings,23 and anysupertype of the lexical semantics ofbuy is also a supertype of the lexicalsemantics ofsell. The same linking constraint that links the NP whichexpresses the buyer onto the subject position forbuy, should therefore linkthe NP which expresses the buyer onto the subject position forsell, too,contrary to fact.

Note first that, even if this argument is valid, it does not invalidate theMTH itself. The MTH only constrains thekind of semantic informationto which linking constraints have access, not how much of linking is se-mantically determined. But, in fact, verbs of exchange do not even falsifythe Semantic Subtype Condition, which constitutes our hypothesis regard-ing how muchinfluence semantics has on linking. This is because both thebuyer and the seller are equally good actors (they are both causal initiatiorsof the exchange). TheSSC is therefore not violated; the same actor con-straint – which links actors to the first element of theARG-ST list – applies

23 Some special circumstances seem to contradict this assumption, such as the signYoubreak, you buyseen in stores. If we happen to break a teapot, we still might not be willingto say that we were sold a broken teapot. But this reluctance might be due to the presenceof some irony in the warning and thus not truly invalidate the extensional equivalencebetween acts of buying and selling. Another questionable case is buying from a vendingmachine, where it seems odd to claim that either the machine or its owner has sold the itemto the buyer.


to both verbs, although not to the same semantic argument for both verbs.However, theSSC and MTH together are still unable to unambiguouslydetermine the application of the actor linking constraint. Put differently,how does the lexical entry of each verb specify which participant-typein exchange situations is denoted by the value of itsACTOR attribute?Presenting our solution to this challenge in detail would lead us too farastray, so we will content ourselves with a sketch of an analysis.

As Fillmore (1977) argues, commercial exchange events involve twotransfers, a transfer of money from the buyer (renter, . . . ) to the seller(lender, . . . ) and a transfer ofgoods (or services) from the seller (lender,. . . ) to the buyer (renter, . . . ). Furthermore, both parties in the transactionagree to the two transfers and mutually initiate them. Thus, the buyer ini-tiates the acquisition of goods and surrender of money while the sellerinitiates the acquisition of money and surrender of goods. In all, foursubevents combine to form a situation of exchange. As a consequence,each verb denoting a situation of exchange must capture in its semanticsrelations that correspond to the four aforementioned events (of course, forsome verbs, what is (temporarily) transferred is the use of goods ratherthan the goods themselves). But each verb also lexically selects a differ-ent subevent as the “key” to the application of linking constraints.Buyselects the acquisition of goods as the “key”,sell the surrender of goods,chargethe acquisition of money (modulo its sublexical modality compon-ent), andpaythe surrender of money. By “keying” which subevent linkingconstraints apply to, the remaining ambiguity in the application of link-ing constraints dissolves. Although this choice of a “key” subevent is notmodel-theoretically motivated (at least as far as we can see), the lexicalsemantic representation of each component event is model-theoreticallygrounded.24

The so-calledspray/load alternation exemplified in (38) and (39),provides another potentially problematic case for theSSC, since the mainverbs of each pair of sentences seem to describe situations whose parti-cipants bear identical properties. But, in fact, participant properties of thesituations described by the two valence alternants do differ. As Gropen etal. (1991) and Dowty (1991) point out, alternating verbs denote situationsthat typically can be characterized both as an externally caused change of

24 It is possible to motivate this choice of “key” event by appealing to the notion ofperspective or profile, as Fillmore (1982), Goldberg (1995) or Croft (1998) do. Althoughwe are sympathetic with the intuition behind such an approach, we refrain from adopting it,since, in the absence of clear model-theoretic differences or of psycholinguistic evidenceof the mental effects of the notion of profile, profiling reduces to lexical stipulation of the“key” subevent.


location of an object or an externally caused change of state of the locationwhere the object ends up.

(38) a. Jill loaded the truck with hay.

b. Jill loaded hay onto the truck.

(39) a. Jill sprayed the wall with paint.

b. Jill sprayed paint toward the wall.

Crucially, the pairs of sentences in (38a)–(39a) and (38b)–(39b) do notdescribe these two changes equally well. The pair of sentences in (39)best illustrates this point. Whereas the alternant ofsprayin (39a) describessituations which involve both kinds of causal changes, the alternant in(39b) can apply to situations in which only a change of location can befelicitously said to have occurred. Thus, the two valence alternants are notsemantically equivalent. In particular, the valence alternant which selectsa PP denoting a location or path does not entail a non-locational changeof state and its linking properties are consistent with that of all other verbswhich denote changes of location. Thewith valence alternant illustrated inexamples (38a) and (39a) is more interesting. In most possible worlds, thetruth of sentences (38a) or (39a) entails that of sentences (38b) and (39b).We saymost, because in non-normal worlds – what we call “Bewitched”worlds, after the situation comedy in which the protagonist could causenon-locational changes of states by twitching her nose – the truth of (38a)does not entail that of (38b). Whether “Bewitched” worlds count as pos-sible depends on speakers (and their imagination or willingness to engagein far-fetched counterfactual thinking). What is important for our purposes,is that, except in those extraordinary worlds, most situations that can befelicitously described by (38a) (and all situations that can be described by(39a)) involve two causal events, one whose effect is a change of location,the other whose effect is a non-locational change of state. Consequently, asis the case for exchange verbs, linking constraints ambiguously apply to thewith alternant of these verbs; either the location or the theme could in prin-ciple be the target of the constraint which maps undergoers onto the lastnominal position of theARG-ST list. Once more, we resolve the ambiguityof constraint application by a lexical stipulation that the lexical semanticrepresentation of thewith alternants selects the semantic representationof the externally caused non-locational change of state as the “key” forlinking purposes and conclude that for neither valence alternant is theSSC

or MTH violated.


Finally, we consider pairs of psychological predicates such asfear/frighten, which one reviewer cites as problematic for our sugges-tion that a numerical comparison of proto-role entailments is unnecessary;like buy andsell, these verbs challenge our strongerSSC hypothesis un-der the assumption that pairs of psychological predicates describe classesof situations which include participants that bear the same character-istic entailments. Several scholars have argued thatfear-type verbs andfrighten-type verbs differ semantically (see Kiparsky (1987), Grimshaw(1990), Croft (1991), Pesetsky (1995), and Wechsler (1995b), among oth-ers). Sentences (40) from Wechsler’s book (his (66c–d)) exemplify thisdifference (see Wechsler, op.cit., p. 41–44 for many pairs of verbs that dis-play a contrast similar to (40a) and (40b) and Pesetsky (1995) for similarcontrasts).

(40) a. Melvin hid behind a tree and made eerie sounds, which fooled thetourists into thinking the house was haunted. In this way, Melvinfrightened the tourists.

b. Melvin hid behind a tree and made eerie sounds, which fooled thetourists into thinking the house was haunted. # In this way, thetourists feared Melvin.

Wechsler accounts for this contrast as follows. The referent of thesubject offrighten causes a state of fear in its object’s referent, but notnecessarily a fear of that cause. The object’s referent may have no notionof the fear’s cause. By contrast, the referent of the subject offear musthave a notion of its object’s referent. Hence the contrast in the felicity of(40a) and (40b).

Similarly, as suggested to us by Beth Levin, verbs in thefrighten, butnot fear class, pass the agentivity tests of Lakoff (1968) in at least one oftheir uses.

(41) a. What John did is frighten Billy.

b. #What Billy did is fear John.

The contrast between (41a) and (41b) suggests that verbs in thefrightenclass can be agentive. This lends support to Wechsler’s and others’ caus-ative analysis of this class of verbs. Agentive transitive verbs are mostlycausatives and a causative analysis offrighten would allow for a mono-semic analysis of the two uses offrighten exemplified in (41a) and(42).


(42) Thunderstorms frighten Billy.

If fearandfrightendescribe the same class of situations, it is hard to seehow the two uses offrighten illustrated in (41a) and (41b) can be instancesof a single meaning. If, on the other hand,frigthen – but not fear – iscausative, grouping these two uses under a single sense is straightforward.It is a general property of many causal relations that one and the samecausal event can either be agentively performed or not (comparekill andmurder). The referent of the subject offrightenwould thus bear the samecausal characteristic entailment in (41a) and (42) and be vague with re-gard to volitionality. Although these arguments suggest thatx frighten yis adequately paraphrased (modulopragmatic oddity) byx causes y to bein a state of fear, undisputable grammatical evidence to that effect is hardto garner in English (Koenig (1994) provides morphosyntactic evidencefor the causal nature offrigthen verbs in French). Part of the difficultyin assessing whether a true causal relation is present in the denotata ofverbs of thefrightenclass stems from the difficulty of assessing the truth ofthe relevant counterfactual when the caused event is a mental state. Thus,assuming that (43a) is adequately paraphrased as (43b), we must assumethe truth of (43c), if we adopt the analysis of causality presented in Lewis(1973). We find assessing the truth (or falsity) of (43c) difficult.

(43) a. The death of so many prime ministers frightens Billy.

b. The death of so many prime ministers causes Billy to be in a stateof fear.

c. Worlds in which Billy is not in a state of fear and not so manyprime ministers died are closer to the “real” world than worlds inwhich Billy is not in a state of fear and so many prime ministersstill died.

However, since, by Wechsler’s argument, the prime ministers’ deathsare not necessarily the content of Billy’s fear, it is hard to see what otherrole than causing the fright they might play in the event, particularly in thelight of the agentivity data illustrated in (41).

Regardless of whether the details of the causative analysis offrightenprove accurate, the contrasts between (40a) and (40b) or (41a) and (41b)show that these pairs of verbsdodiffer semantically. The characteristic en-tailments borne by the “experiencer” (the referent of the object offrightenor the subject offear) are distinct. The referent of the subject offear, butnot that of the object offrigthen, must have a notion of the other directargument’s referent. Similarly, the characteristic entailments borne by the


“stimulus” (the referent of the subject offrightenor the object offear) aredistinct. The referent of the subject offrighen, but not that of the objectof fear, can volitionally engage in the event.25 These pairs of verbs do nottherefore invalidate theSSCor theMTH.

The relationship between the types of situations whichfearandfrightendescribe illustrates why we have stated the Attribute-to-entailment con-straint unidirectionally rather than as a biconditional. When a state of fearoccurs, so does some corresponding (possibly non-volitional) frightening.Thus, the entailment schema in (44) holds under a generic use offrighten(but its converse does not, per Wechsler’s data). Again, if participantproperties determined lexical semantic structures, the truth of (44) wouldrequire us to say that the attribute offear whose value denotes a valueof y would also bear the proto-entailment of causality. By making theAttribute-to-Entailment condition unidirectional, we avoid this difficulty.Note that even though lexical semantic representations do not necessar-ily include all properties that directly or indirectly hold of the describedsituations, these representations can be semantically well-grounded. Con-straints among situations such as the one represented in (44) do not needto be encoded in lexical semantic structures.26

(44) ∀x∀y x fears y|= y frightens x

It is of course impossible to prove the empirical soundness of theSSC

and MTH without an exhaustive discussion of the entire lexicon. But ourdiscussion of well-known cases that have been argued to falsify a StrongGrounding Hypothesis should make clear why we do not believe they do.At most, what these putative doublets demonstrate is the need to selectone semantic relation within a predicator’s lexical semantics to serve asthe “key” to linking. That much stipulation is shared by all semantically-based linking theories, including Dowty’s numerical comparison approach,which must stipulate for each member of such doublets which argument ismapped onto subject and/or object position (since two arguments of thecorresponding predicates are equally good proto-agents or proto-patients).

25 Tenny (1994) argues that these pairs of verbs also differ aspectually. We agree withvan Voorst (1992) that they do not. Apparent aspectual differences reduce to differences inthe verbs’ ability to be aspectually coerced, in the sense of Moens and Steedman (1988)or deSwart (1998), a property which, we believe, ultimately stems from the difference incausal structure of the two classes of verbs.

26 We freely borrow from Barwise and Perry (1983) the notion of constraints amongsituations. See Larson (1988) for an interesting use of such non-lexically representedconstraints among situations in the linking of directional and instrumental phrases.


6. CONCLUSION

This paper has made two claims.

1. The semantics of predicators encodes two kinds of information, situ-ational information and modal information. The former pertains to therelations which participants entertain in the described eventualities, thelatter to the restricted sets of worlds and time indices at which theserelations are to be evaluated. The sublexical modality component oftenincludes the lexical counterpart of the contextual selection of a ModalBase by modal verbs for which Kratzer (1981) argues.

2. We can maintain an entailment-based grounding for linking constraintsif we relativize characteristic entailments of situation participants toa selected set of possible circumstances. The “sieving” of possibleworlds or time indices which this relativization requires is inde-pendently motivated and does not force us to add to our semantictoolkit.

These two claims are logically independent, at least in isolation. Ouranalysis of the lexical meaning of verbs such ashave, lack, or needandthe relationships between their meanings can be true even if the linkingconstraints presented in section 4 and the linking theory that underliesthem are wrong-headed. Butif our second claim is correct (whether in theform of ourMTH or otherwise), it bolsters our first contention, given othernatural assumptions about linguistic theory, in particular, the GrammaticalConstraint of Jackendoff (1983). Since this metatheoretical constraint fa-vors,ceteris paribus, semantic representations that account for otherwisearbitrary syntactic and lexical generalizations, the simplification of linkingconstraints that results from our analysis of the lexical meaning of verbscorroborates the proposal we have advocated in section 3. A sublexicalmodality analysis of the meanings of the verbs in (4)–(8)doesreduce thearbitrariness of the syntax/semantics interface.

We would like to end this paper by mentioning two further issues thatmust be reserved for future research. The first is the possible existenceof differences between sublexical and superlexical modalities. We haveadapted Kratzer’s account of superlexical modality to model some of thesublexical modalities we discuss and noted that sublexical modalities donot let the context select the Modal Base. But do the two kinds of mod-ality differ in other ways? This question is particularly pertinent becauseit is well-known that differences exist between sublexical and superlex-ical negations or comparative markers. Horn (1989), for example, notesthat sublexical negation cannot be interpreted metalinguistically. Similarly,Pinkham (1985) and MacCawley (1988b) note that morphological compar-


atives in English cannot receive a metalinguistic interpretation (compareMcCawley’s examplesRoger is more happy than surprisedand*Roger ishappier than surprised). Do the differences between sublexical and supra-lexical negation or markers of comparison extend to modal operators? Atthis point, we do not know. Finally, although this paper has concentratedon English, our informal investigation of a few other languages suggeststhat the partition of lexical semantic information into a situational core anda sublexical modality component might be warranted cross-linguistically;in particular, theMTH (in its weaker form) seems to hold in those lan-guages too. Of course, much more work must be conducted before thecross-linguistic validity of theMTH can be established.

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Jean-Pierre KoenigUniversity at BuffaloState University of New YorkE-mail: [email protected]

Anthony R. DavisAnswerLogic, Inc.E-mail: [email protected]

sublexical modality and the structure of lexical semantic representations

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