A Finer-grained Semantic Approach to Events: How to Rescue Pesetsky's (1982) Semantic Selection

Abstract

Ever since researchers like Pesetsky (1982) reached a conclusion that c-selection is derivable from s-selection, people have simply assumed that the similarity, i.e. VP, in c-selection between the perception verb see and the causative verb make may be reduced to the same semantic property of s-selection which takes the semantic unit of events as complements. However, Odijk (1997) challenges such correspondence viewpoint mainly based on the observation that the perception verb see,unlike the causative verb make, can c-select pronouns (or NPs) as well as VPs as its complements. In this paper, I pursue a finer-grained semantic approach to events, where the perception verb see indeed s-selects for temporally referential events which I define exist before and during the perceiving time while the causative verb make s-selects for temporally non-referential events which do not exist before and during the causing time. In this view, it is the temporally non-referential status of caused events that prohibits a pronoun to take the caused events as legitimate antecedents (cf. Stechow 2001, Moltmann 2004). The finer-grained semantic approach that I adopt in this paper turns out to be in opposition to what Odijk (1997) argued for, rather in favor of what Pesetsky (1982) suggested.