Íslenskt mál og almenn málfræði - 2020, Page 132

b. *Det kunde vänta något trevligt barnen när de kom hem.
expl could await something nice children.def when they came home
We assume that the Theme pivot is generated as complement to vänta
‘await’ and that barnen ‘the children’ is an Experiencer, generated in the
specifier of the Root phrase.14 Note that only the order predicted by the
tree in (15) is possible.
Similar examples with an animate Experiencer and a Theme pivot in
the Root phrase are possible in Icelandic, see (22). The Theme pivot can
also appear in the IP, see (22b), but not the Experiencer, see (22c). This
has to do with the verb bíða ‘await’, see section 3.3.
(22)a. Það gat beðið barnanna eitthvað skemmtilegt á kvöldin. (Ice.)
expl could awaited children.gen.def something nice.nom on evening.def
‘Something nice could be waiting for the children in the evening.’
b. Það gat eitthvað skemmtilegt beðið barnanna á kvöldin.
expl could something nice.nom awaited children.gen.def on evening.def
c. *Það gat barnanna beðið eitthvað skemmtilegt á kvöldin.
expl could children.gen.def awaited something nice.nom on evening.def
d. ??Það gat beðið barnanna á kvöldin eitthvað skemmtilegt.
expl could awaited children.gen.def on evening.def something nice.nom
It is thus possible to have more than one argument in the Root phrase in
active presentational sentences in both Swedish and Icelandic, provided
that one of the arguments is a Theme pivot. Note that the version with
the Theme argument following an adverbial, see (22d), which would be a
case of indefinite NP postposing, is noticeably less acceptable.
In Swedish there is a clear difference between (23a), where the inani-
mate pivot en tanke ‘a thought’ is interpreted as a Theme, and the un -
grammatical (23b), where the animate en police ‘a policeman’ is understood
as an Agent. (23b) cannot be generated given the structure in (15) since
Agents are merged in Spec,vP and would exclude the expletive subject.
(23)a. Det hade slagit henne en tanke. (Swe.)
expl had struck her a thought
‘A thought had struck her.’
b. *Det hade slagit henne en polis.
expl had hit her a policeman
Engdahl, Sigurðsson, Zaenen and Maling132
14 A reviewer questions the label Experiencer for barnen ‘the children’ but this is moti-
vated by the fact that only animate arguments are possible here. The English verb await,
used in the translation, is different in that it typically takes an inanimate argument, as in
That request is still awaiting FDA action, adapted from a Wall Street Journal example.