Some Remarks on De-adjectival Verbs and Resultative Secondary Predicates

Resumen

The major aim of this paper consists in showing that de-adjectival verbs like engordar (<en+adjective+ar>, 'fatten'), agrandar (<a+adjective+ar>, 'enlarge') and ampliar (<null affix+adjective+ar>, 'widen'), share some crucial properties with resultative secondary predicates (Mary pounded the metal flat). A detailed analysis of these constructions seems to indicate that de-adjectival verbs and resultative secondary predicates share a common structure. The structure that we propose for de-adjectival verbs and constructions with resultative secondary predicates is the one suggested by Hale and Keyser for denominal location verbs (bottle, can) and by Hale and Keyser (1991, 1992) and Romero (1997), among others, for basic ditransitive constructions (John gave the book to Mary). This hypothesis allows us to explain some co-occurrence restrictions, for example the impossibility of having resultative secondary predicates and Goal arguments with denominal and de-adjectival verbs.