D‐Licensing in Adjectival Passives

Abstract

This article argues that in addition to the familiar Case licensing requirement known as the ‘Case Filter’, nominal arguments (DPs) are subject to a requirement that I refer to as ‘D‐licensing’, construed as a requirement of DPs themselves. It is claimed that this notion of D‐licensing is useful in the characterization of restrictions on adjectival participle formation. Adjectival participles fail to license the full complement frame of the corresponding verb not because they fail to assign Case, but because they lack D‐licensing structure.