Atypical predicate-argument relations

Book excerpt: This book deals with atypical predicate-argument relations. Although the relations between predicates, especially verbal, and their arguments have been long studied, most studies are concerned with typical telic verbs in the past tense, indicative mood, active voice, with all arguments expressed. Recently, linguists have become interested in other types of predicate-argument relations displaying atypical properties, be they morphological or syntactic, in one language or cross-linguistically. The articles in this book investigate some of these: argument marking with some special groups of verbs, arguments not foreseen in the verb valency and contributed by the construction, verbs in idiomatic constructions, valency-changing operations, arguments in thetic sentences or in participle constructions etc. The authors work within different theoretical frameworks and on various languages, from more current languages like English, Spanish, French or German, to Hebrew or lamaholot, an Austronesian language.