Accounting for the Alternating Behaviour of Location Arguments from the Perspective of Role and Reference Grammar

Abstract

This paper presents a description of the alternations in which the location argument participates in English and accounts for its various realizations from the point of view of Role and Reference Grammar. The analysis of the multiple alternating behaviour of the location argument in various transitive and intransitive alternations in English is mostly related to marked macrorole assignment typically to Undergoer, such as in He loaded the truck with hay (as compared with the kernel construction He loaded hay on the truck ), but also to Actor as for instance in the Location subject alternation, in which the location argument occupies the subject position, as in The bag carries all your belongings , a construction which implies the loss of one of the arguments in the kernel structure ( I carry all your belongings in the bag ). Additionally, the syntactic behaviour of location arguments in marked constructions very often conveys a change of Aktionsart ascription with respect to the kernel construction, as in the swarm alternation in which the predicate in the kernel construction is analysed as an activity ( Bees swarmed in the garden ) whereas in the marked construction it changes into a state ( The garden is swarming with bees ), a feature that has been attested in some of the constructions analysed in this paper. This investigation also provides an analysis of the with­- phrase that is often encoded in the marked constructions where the location argument is codified as a core argument. Keywords: alternations; constructions; location argument; Role and Reference Grammar