Licensing of argument structures by functional heads: evidence from English have

Abstract

This paper provides a unified syntactic account for the distribution of English have in causative and experiencer constructions. I argue that have is realized in the context of an applicative head (Appl) and an event introducer v, regardless of the type of v. In causative, have is spelled out when Appl merges under vCAUSE, and in experiencer when Appl merges under vBE. The proposed account supports a theoretical claim that argument structure is licensed by functional syntactic structure (Borer 2005); unlike this study, however, it shows that the relevant functional heads are not aspectual heads, but Appl and v.