When Events Meet Phrase Structure: Perception Verb Complements

Abstract

Syntacticians have begun to take note of the emerging role of events in the mapping from lexical semantics to syntax ever since Davidson (1967) laid out a theory involving action (or event) expressions by defining events as primitive individuals. Extensional verbs like see become central in this respect since they express relations between individuals and events. In this paper, I reexamine the internal structure of Korean perception verb complements (PVCs) to reveal how the referential type of events s-selected by the extensional verb see is arranged in the syntax. I propose that the syntactic category, VP, must be licensed by the aspectual head, Aspect, to get the event argument to be interpreted as referential. This study eventually contributes to a better understanding on how the semantic concept of events is encoded in phrase structure. (Korea University)