This paper gives an account of the event and argument structure of past participles, and the linking between argument structure and valence structure. It further accounts for how participles form perfect and passive constructions with auxiliaries. We assume that the same participle form is used in both types of construction. Our claim is that the valence structure of a past participle is predictable from its semantic type, and that the valence structure predicts which auxiliary a past participle combines with in perfect constructions and whether the past participle may occur in passive constructions. Our approach sets itself apart from similar approaches

Danish has a small group of words traditionally referred to as spatial adverbs. These adverbs are characterized by having three distinct forms, two directional forms, -Ø (1a) and <em>-ad</em> (1b), and a stative form <em>–e</em> (1c) which also occurs in source PPs (1d): <ol start="1"><li> <ol type="a"><li>Hunden løb <em>ind</em> i haven.<br>’Dog_the ran into garden_the’ <li>Vi gik <em>hjemad</em>.<br>’We went homeward’ <li>Børnene legede <em>ude</em> i haven.<br>’The children played out in garden_the’ <li>Hunden kom løbende <em>inde</em> fra haven.<br>’Dog_the came running within from garden_the’ </ol></ol> The paper investigates the relationship between these adverbs and locative prepositions within an event based semantics. It is suggested that adverb + preposition form a complex predicate denoting a state temporally related to another event. In most cases the preposition specifies the locative relation, while the temporal relation is determined compositionally. Thus a number of prepositions, <em>i</em>, ‘in’, <em>på</em>, ‘on’, <em>over</em>, ‘over’, etc., are ambiguous between a directional and a stative reading, but unambiguous in combination with adverbs: <em>ind i</em>: directional, <em>inde i</em>: stative. Similarly, as mentioned above, the –e form of adverbs is compatible with a source and a stative reading, but unambiguous in combination with a preposition, 1c. being stative and 1d. source. Locational adverbs furthermore express a relation between two locations. In directionals the two related locations are goal and source. 2a. says that the garden is ‘in’ in relation to the source of the motion, for instance the street, in 2b. the garden is ‘out’ so the source could for instance be the house. <ol start="2"><li> <ol type="a"><li>Hunden løb ind i haven.<br>‘Dog_the ran into in garden_the’ <li>Hunden løb ud i haven.<br>’Dog_the ran out in garden_the’ </ol></ol> In statives the location denoted by the PP is normally related to the location of the speaker, 3a, or the addressee, 3b. <ol start="3"><li> <ol type="a"><li>Ole sidder ude i haven.<br>’Ole sits out in garden_the’ <li>Vi sidder her ude i haven.<br>’We sit here out in garden_the. </ol></ol>

In this paper we propose an analysis of Danish pseudocoordination constructions. The analysis is based on a hybrid phrase hierarchy where phrase types are assumed to be subtypes of types that cut across the traditional division of phrasal types, allowing the phrase type of pseudocoordinations to be a subtype of both coordinate phrases and headed phrases, and consequently inherit properties from both types. The analysis is linearization-based. We further develop a set of constraints on the phrasal types in the hierarchy. The hybrid phrase hierarchy and the set of constraints on the various types in the hierarchy explain why, on the one hand, pseudocoordinations contain conjunctions and the conjuncts must have the same form and tense, and on the other, have a fixed order, allow extraction out of the second conjunct, do not allow overt subjects in the second conjunct and allow transitive verbs to appear in there-constructions.

Transitive verbs are in general not allowed in there-constructions in Danish, but a small subset is, and this paper gives an explanation. We suggest two constraints on there-insertion, a subject with the semantic role of themeand an empty object position, and show how the subset of verbs meets these constraints while other transitives do not. The analysis is formalized within the framework of Linearization-based HPSG.

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