the term "argument structure" refers to the syntactic configuration projected by a lexical item. It is the system of structural relations holding between heads and the arguments linked to them, as parts of their entries in the lexicon, namely the head-complement relation and the head-specifier relation (for more recent discussions see especially Hale and Keyser 1999: 453). In this framework all simple unergative verbs, such as swim, fly, try, as well as the denominal verbs (verbs derived from nouns) like laugh, dance, walk, jump have the argument structure illustrated in (3): (3) This structure includes a verb, which is empty, and a lexical constant, which is the nominal complement of the surface denominal verb. These verbs are derived by conflation, i.e., by a specific kind of incorporation. The process of conflation, which consists basically of head movement, adjoining the nominal to the verbal head, fuses the two items into a single word so that the verb is no longer empty, as it shares the overt phonological matrix of the noun. It is worth stressing the fact that the verbal head projects a structure that contains a complement, its sister, but no specifier. This is a characteristic of unergative verbs in general: they project no specifier. In sentential syntax 4 they have a . Cases in which the complement of these constructions is a definite determiner in German (er schreibt den Brief 'he writes the letter') are not relevant for the contrast between Greek and German. . The term "sentential syntax" refers to the syntactic structure assigned to a phrase or sentence, which involves both the lexical item and its arguments and also its "extended projection". It also includes a full range of functional categories and projections implicated in the formation of the sentence interpretable at PF and LF. 'Creation' verb-complement constructions  (5) Head-Complement: If X is the complement of a head H, then X is the unique sister of H (X and H mutually c-command one another). These verb-complement constructions, then, project the same monadic (type) structure as does the empty verb of (3), a situation illustrated in (6): (6) (6) represents the simple head-complement configuration. Except from the property of the head V projecting no specifier, another property that these verb-complement constructions share with unergative verbs is that they can not enter into the transitive alternation, in contrast with unaccusative verbs, as we see in (7a, b): (7) a. The cowboys made trouble. * The beer made the cowboys trouble. (i.e., the cowboys made trouble because of the beer). b. The children laughed. * The clown laughed the children. (i.e., the children laughed because of the clown).

No abstract

The paper observes that the Vendler classification is not sufficient as a classification of verbs, since it cannot explain why some telic verbs, such as change of state (COS) verbs and degree achievements (DAs) appear with the durational adverbial (d-adverbial) ‘for X time’ in Greek, in English and in German, while some atelics like semelfactives appear with the frame adverbial (f-adverbial)se X ora(‘in X time’) in Greek. In the spirit of Iatridouet al.(2003) it is proposed that the d-adverbial ‘for X time’ tests not only for (a)telicity but also for (im)perfectivity. It also argues that the two d-adverbials in Greekja X oraandepi X ora(‘for X time’) are to be found with different grammatical (viewpoint) aspect: the former with perfective aspect and the latter with imperfective aspect. This is due to the fact that theja X oragives not only durative temporal information but also a lexical aspectual one, while theepi X oragives only a durative temporal.

This paper investigates the hypothesis of the preference of Goals overSources in the representation of Change of Possession events. Applying a corpusbased methodology, we analyse two verbs belonging to this event type, namely BUY and SELL, in German and Modern Greek, two languages that differ with respect to the patterns they use to encode motion events (i.e. a Satellite-and a Verb-framed language respectively). We find that both languages conform to the general tendency reported across languages to give prominence to the Goal: SELL is more likely to occur with the optional Goal Prepositional Phrase than BUY is with the optional Source Prepositional Phrase. Additionally, we address the question as to whether languages showing different patterns regarding the encoding of the Path differ with respect to the predominance of the Goal over the Source in events that express non-prototypical dislocation. Our findings indicate that the typological difference of the two languages has an indirect effect on the representation of Path elements for these particular verbs: German expresses the optional Prepositional

No abstract