In an "Aspect" and "Remarks" type lexicon, as well as in the "lexicalist" models that emerged in the '70s and '80s, a large role is played by listed (arbitrary) information in the lexical entries of (substantive) items. Such information could include all or some of the following:
a. The sound-meaning pair
b. Syntactic category
c. Syntactic insertion frame (subcatgorization)
d. Thematic roles
e. Derivational affixation
f. Inflectional affixation
At the same time, however, research during the same decades also attempted to reduce the amount of arbitrary information in the lexicon by deriving at least some of the properties in (a-f) from other components of the computational system.
This class will investigate this issue from the perspective of event structure. Topics discussed will be:
a. The lexical inventory: functional vs. substantive elements
b. Functional structure - its properties, its role, its interpretation.
c. Licensing Phrase Structure within the predicate
d. The building blocks of event structure
e. Do events decompose?
f. The syntax and semantics of quantity (aka telicity)
g. The (a)syntax and (a)semantics of non-quantity (aka atelicity)
h. Accusative and Partitive and the projection of event structure
i. Is Slavic Perfective telic?
j. The syntax of the event argument