WHY DOES ENGLISH NEED TO BE BOTHERING WHILE ROMANCE JUST BOTHERS? Eugenia Mangialavori Rasia1 and Josep Ausensi2 1CONICET & 2Universitat Pompeu Fabra WHY DOES ENGLISH NEED TO BE BOTHERING WHILE ROMANCE JUST BOTHERS? Eugenia Mangialavori Rasia1 and Josep Ausensi2 1CONICET & 2Universitat Pompeu Fabra Introduction • We focus on Intransitive Causatives (ICs), an underexplored argument structure realization in verbs entering causative alternation, with key implications for argument structure and verb formation/derivation. We focus on the asymmetry between English (1) and Romance (2). (1) a. Smoking kills. b. Bleach disinfects. c. Alcohol dehydrates. d. Rice constipates. e. Shaving creams irritate. f. Sunlight oxidizes and discolors. g. Normal dryers wrinkle. (2) a. Fumar mata. b. La lejía desinfecta. c. El alcohol deshidrata. d. El arroz estriñe. e. Las cremas de afeitar irritan. f. La luz solar oxida y destiñe. g. Las secadoras arrugan. • ICs challenge major claims on argument structure and causative alternations: 1. The internal argument deﬁned a constant constituent in the causative alternation (Haley & Keyser 2002) 2. The prediction that a unique argument in causative alternating verbs will be interpreted as undergoer by default (Levin & Rappaport Hovav 2005). Conversely, ICs show defective cause(r) reading. Aspect and semantics of ICs • (a) ICs cannot appear in perception reports, be located in space (3) or license habitual readings (4). (3) a.#John saw smoking kill. (cf. I saw John kill Tom) b.#Shaving creams irritate in the bathroom. (4) a. Alcohol (#regularly) dehydrates. (cf. John regularly kills ani- mals) b. Smoking (#regularly) kills. • They are odd in contexts forcing eventive readings (5). Modals gen- erate epistemic (not deontic) readings (6). This pattern is the one ex- pected for states (Maienborn 2005, Rothmayr 2007). (5) a.#What the dryer did was wrinkle. (cf. What John did was kill animals) b.#What happened was that rice constipated. (6) a. Smoking must kill (OK It probably has property x | #It is under obligation to kill) b. John must kill Tom (#He probably has property x | OK He is under obligation to kill) • (b) ICs are similar to middles in that they are restricted to generic tenses (*Smoking killed/This vase broke easily). Both constructions pattern sta- tively, and like dispositional generics. • They do not entail a deontic reading, but report a property of the sub- ject (Lekakou 2015). ICs are thus true in virtue of properties inherent to the subject • ICs contrast with dispositional habituals that “assert the existence of a pattern of regularly recurring events” (Krifka et al. 1995) (true insofar as there were actual helping events in the past, e.g., John helps homeless people). • ICs crucially differ from middles in that the sole DP is not internal but external: hence, the property is not attributed to an undergoer (theme), but to a cause. • (d) Genericity is a property shared with another dyadic/monadic argu- ment structure alternation (Unexpressed/Null Object alternations, Levin 1993) (8): PROPERTY-OF-AGENT ALTERNATION. (7) a. This dog bites (#but hasn’t bitten anybody yet). b. Stand back! This horse kicks (#but hasn’t kicked anybody yet). • Yet, ICs are distinct in verb type (activity/manner verbs in (8) vs. re- sult verbs in ICs) and interpretive and selectional restrictions on the subject (animate/volitional actor in (8) vs. inanimate causer in ICs). Syntax of ICs Unlike Property-of-Agent Alternation (7), ICs are not null-object con- structions (NO). • ICs do not allow null-object-oriented depictive predication, which is OK if arbitrary implicit arguments are present (cf. Il dottore visita [ ] nudi ‘The doctor visits [ ] naked’ (Rizzi 1996)). (8) a. *Smoking kills dead/depressed. b. John cooks healthy. c. John buys cheap. • ICs do not allow null object quantiﬁcation either (e.g. bare molti, Ital- ian) (9) a. *Smoking kills a lot. b. John eats a lot. • Ne-cliticization and inchoative/passive morphol