Abstract

Can the well-known verb-framed/satellite-framed variation observed by Talmy (1975 et seq.) be productively analyzed as a true parameter, or is it in fact something else, perhaps a morphological tendency of individual lexical items in a given language? Here we defend the view that it is indeed a parameter, of a well-understood type: a head-movement parameter. We claim that it results from the variety of uninterpretable feature that is bundled with the flavor of v which is used in change-of-state constructions. The technical apparatus employed is another instance of a typical head-movement parameter, of the kind that accounts for the familiar V-to-T or T-to-C parameters. We claim that in verb-framed languages, head-movement to change of state v° is mandatory, just as head-movement to finite T° is mandatory in V-to-T languages. The appeal of this approach in contrast to previous analyses is that it does not ascribe a deficiency to verb-framed languages, either in their semantic composition inventory, or their inventory of structural operations, both of which seem prima facie implausible from a biolinguistic/Minimalist perspective.