Verb Particle Constructions in Romance A Lexical Syntactic Account PDF

Verb-particle constructions in Romance:
A lexical-syntactic account1
JAUME MATEU AND GEMMA RIGAU
Abstract
In this paper, we deal with some important differences between Romance verb
particle constructions and Germanic ones. Despite claims to the contrary (Ia-
cobini & Masini 2007), we argue that Romance languages (Italian included)
consistently obey the Talmian generalization that non-directional manner verbs
do not coappear with non-adjunct paths in Romance. We relate this generaliza-
tion to the important restriction that those verbs that enter into verb-particle
constructions in Romance encode or involve Path (e.g., It. Gianni è entrato den-
tro lit.‘Gianni entered inside’; Gianni è corso via ‘Gianni ran away’; Gianni ha
lavato via la macchia ‘Gianni washed the stain away’); crucially, unlike Ger-
manic, Romance does not allow verb-particle constructions where the verb en-
codes or involves pure manner (John danced away; John worked his debts off).
We use Haugen’s (2009) syntactic distinction between Incorporation and Con-
flation to draw some relevant syntactic differences between Romance and Ger-
manic verb-particle constructions: those ones formed via Incorporation are
possible in Romance, while those ones formed via Conflation/Compounding
are only possible in Germanic.
1. Introduction
It has been pointed out that verb-particle constructions fascinate syntacticians

because they do not fall neatly within the distinctions between syntax and mor-
phology and between idioms and compositional constructions. As a result, one
1. The authors are grateful to M. Luisa Zubizarreta and Violeta Demonte and to two anony-
mous reviewers for their observations and suggestions. This research has been sponsored
by grants HUM2006-13295-C02-01/02 (Ministerio de Ciencia y Tecnología-FEDER) and
2009SGR1079 (Generalitat de Catalunya).
Probus 22 (2010), 241–269 0921–4771/10/022-0241

DOI 10.1515/prbs.2010.009 ©Walter de Gruyter
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242 Jaume Mateu and Gemma Rigau
finds different proposals in a vast literature, which is mostly about Germanic

languages (e.g., see Dehé et al. (2002) and McIntyre (2007), for a review).2
More recently, verb-particle constructions have also attracted the attention of
Romance linguists since Italian verbi sintagmatici (‘phrasal verbs’) like those
in (1) turn to be quite productive in this Romance language as well (e.g., see
Gràcia 1988; Simone 1996; Masini 2005, 2006; Iacobini & Masini 2007; Ia-
cobini 2009; Cini 2008, among others).
(1) buttare giù ‘throw down’, uscire fuori ‘exit out’, correre via ‘run away’,
tirare su ‘bring up’, lavare via ‘wash away’, etc.
In this paper, we deal with some important differences between Germanic verb
particle constructions and Romance ones. For example, we want to call into
question one recent important claim found in Iacobini & Masini (2007): “it is
evident that Italian does not conform to Talmy’s generalization, since it behaves
more like English than Spanish”.3 Masini (2005, 2006), Iacobini & Masini
(2007), and Iacobini (2009) provide an interesting descriptive account of how
verb-particle constructions like those in (1) emerged in Italian. There is, how-
ever, a glaring omission in their descriptive works: i.e., they do not address
what we argue is the most important difference between Italian and Germanic
phrasal verbs. By addressing this crosslinguistic point in the present paper, we
reach a conclusion that is in fact opposite to theirs: Italian verbi sintagmatici
resemble Germanic phrasal verbs but only superficially. That is to say, when
a more abstract level of analysis is adopted (e.g., the one provided by Hale
and Keyser’s (2002) l(exical)-syntactic theory of argument structure), Italian
can be shown to behave more like Spanish than English in that relevant sense,
namely both Romance languages consistently obey the Talmian generalization
that non-directional manner verbs do not coappear with (non-adjunct) paths in
Romance (see Section 4 below).
In part, the present paper can be taken as a response to Masini’s (2005)
and Iacobini and Masini’s (2007) Construction Grammar approaches to Italian
verb-particle constructions. Not only will we show that the lexical variation
which inspired their surface-based works can be structurally accounted for, we
will also argue that it actually constitutes support for the structural position
2. Two renowned proposals are the Complex Predicate approach (Johnson 1991; Neeleman
1994; Stiebels & Wunderlich 1994; Zeller 2001, among others) and the Small Clause ap-
proach (Kayne 1985; Hoekstra 1988; den Dikken 1995; Ramchand & Svenonius 2002, Mateu
2008, among others).
3. As shown below in Section 4, they refer to Talmy’s (1991, 2000) highly influential typology
of motion expressions, with its dichotomy of “verb-framed languages” like Spanish (where
path is expressed as a semantic component of a motion verb) and “satellite-framed languages”
like English (where path is expressed as a “satellite” around the verb, e.g., as a particle).

Verb-particle constructions in Romance 243
against the continuum position found in some cognitive and functionalist ap-
proaches. We will show that this lexical variation is not arbitrary nor can be
accounted for in the “everything is listed” kind of Construction Grammar uni-
verse, but instead is tightly constrained by the same structural factors that can
be observed to be in effect in canonical motion-construction instances in the
languages under consideration.
Accordingly, we will argue, for example, that there is a principled explana-
tion for contrasts like the one exemplified in (2): the ungrammaticality of (2b)
shows that there is no Italian counterpart of dance away. Of course, one could
say that idiosyncrasy is expected if phrasal verbs are formed in the lexicon (i.e.,
some are possible, some are not). However, we will show that there is a general
structural explanation of this difference.
(2) a. Gianni è corso via.
Gianni is run away
‘Gianni ran away.’
b. * Gianni è danzato via.
Gianni is danced away
‘Gianni danced away.’
We claim that phrasal verbs like those in (1) are possible in Italian precisely
because their verbs already encode or involve directionality, which is further
specified by the particle. In contrast, this restriction does not hold in Germanic:
accordingly, examples like those in (3) are impossible in Italian because the
verb does not involve directionality, this meaning component being only en-
coded in a true Path satellite. Masini (2005, 2006), Iacobini and Masini (2007),
and Iacobini (2009) do not offer any general explanation of why verb-particle
constructions like those in (2b) and (3) are impossible in Italian.
(3) a. John worked his debts off.
b. John danced the night away.
Interestingly, Masini (2005: 167) claims that the existence of Italian phrasal
verbs like lavare via (‘wash away’) or raschiare via (‘scrape away’) in (4)
depends on the removal sense of the verbs involved (cf. 5).
(4) a. Gianni ha lavato via la macchia.
Gianni has washed away the stain
‘Gianni washed the stain away.’
b. Gianni ha raschiato via la vernice.
Gianni has scraped away the paint
‘Gianni scraped the paint away.’
(5) a. [V [P via]]
b. V= agentive verb of removing

c. “to remove by V”
Masini (2005: 167)
However, what Masini misses is the crucial observation that what seems to
be an idiosyncratic restriction on “removal verbs” in (4) is actually related to
a more general fact of Italian: i.e., its verb-framed nature with respect to Path
(see Section 4 below); that is, when dealing with the particular via case, Masini
(2005) and Iacobini and Masini (2007) are not successful in explaining what
(4a,b) and (2a) have in common that makes them possible in Italian, while
(2b) and (3) are not. As noted, there is a Talmian generalization involved here:
Italian verbs like correre, lavare or raschiare can be expected to enter into
verb-particle constructions like those in (2a) and (4) because these verbs can
be claimed to acquire directionality. In contrast, examples like those in (2b)
and (3) are expected to be impossible in Italian, since their verbs do not encode
nor involve any directionality component.
Our point is then clear: one cannot simply state that Italian behaves more
like English than Spanish on the basis of surface facts, without comparing the
entire array of paradigms in the two languages (see Section 4 below).
Moreover, in the next section, we show that verb-particle constructions are
not a quirk of Italian, but this phenomenon is also found within other Romance
languages with different degrees of productivity (see also Iacobini 2009; Mateu
and Rigau 2009). Once again the Talmian prediction is that Germanic phrasal
verbs like those in (2b) and (3) should not be found in those other Romance
languages that have verb-particle constructions. We will show that such a pre-
diction is borne out.
To advance our conclusion, we claim that, unlike English, Italian (and, more
generally, Romance) prevents pure (i.e., non-directional) manner verbs from
taking Paths as complements, whereby the relevant structural meaning com-
ponent in the Romance examples of verb-particle constructions (the apparently
problematic examples in (2a) and (4) included) will be shown to be Path, rather
than Manner. Accordingly, our conclusion to be exposed in Section 4 will be
that Italian does conform to Talmy’s (1991, 2000) generalization concerning
Romance languages: i.e., they lack the so-called “Co-event pattern”.
In Section 4, we will also show that our syntactic proposal can be related to
Folli’s (2002) and Folli & Ramchand’s (2005) interesting proposals concerning
the differences between English and Italian goal of motion constructions: we
will argue that their [R]esult feature, which can also be claimed to be lexically
encoded in verbs like those in (2a) and (4), corresponds to our Talmian Path.
Accordingly, we will show that their criticisms of Talmy’s typology are not
well-grounded since, despite appearances, these constructions in Romance do
not counterexemplify our structural version of the Talmian typology but rather
support it.

The organization of the paper is as follows: in Section 2 we show that

verb-particle constructions are not a quirk of Italian but a Pan-Romance phe-
nomenon. In Section 3 we present our syntactic analysis of Italian phrasal verbs
like lavare via ‘wash away’, which is inspired by Hale & Keyser’s (2000) in-
sightful l-syntactic account of English complex verbs like cool down or heat
up. In Section 4 we deal with the important differences between Romance vs.
Germanic phrasal verbs within the context of Talmy’s (1991, 2000) typology of
motion events. In Section 5 we present our conclusion and some final remarks.
2. Romance phrasal verbs: A Pan-Romance phenomenon
In this section, we show that the presence of phrasal verbs in Romance lan-
guages is productive and non-sporadic (see also Iacobini 2009). To begin with,
it is interesting to point out that the presence of verb-particle constructions is
widely attested in Old Romance languages: for example, see the data from Old
Spanish in (6) (from the CORDE data base), Old Catalan in (7), and Old French
in (8) (see Rouget & Tremblay 2003; Burnett & Tremblay 2007, 2009).4
(6) a. echar fuera ‘throw out’
(Nebrija, A. de (1492) Gramática castellana, 24V)
b. echar arriba ‘throw up’
(Herrera, G. A. de (1513) Obra agricultura, 2)
c. echar delante ‘throw forward’
(Pineda, J. de (1589) Diálogos familiares de la agricultura cris-
tiana, IV, 174)
d. venir delante ‘come forward’
((c 1400) Biblia Escorial I-j-4: Pentateuco, 136R)
e. volver atrás ‘turn back’
(Anónimo (1575–1580) Relaciones topográficas de los pueblos de
España, 469)
f. subir arriba ‘rise/raise up’
(Anónimo (1293) Gran Conquista de Ultramar. ms. 1187 BNM)
(7) a. anar defora ‘go out’
(Sant Gregori (1340) Diàlegs, 24v
b. gitar fora ‘throw out’
(Sant Gregori (1340) Diàlegs, 5v)
c. metre sus ‘put up’
(Anònim (XVc.) Curial e Güelfa, 155)
4. Actually, verb-particle constructions were already common in pre-classical Latin: see Iacobini
(2009: 37) for examples from Plautus (254–184 BC).

d. pujar sus ‘rise up’

(Pere IV (XIVc) Crònica, 201)
e. tirar defora ‘throw out’
(Sant Gregori (1340) Diàlegs, 1.19)
f. tornar amunt ‘turn up’
(1357–60, Llibre de Cort Reial mallorquí, 242)
g. treure sus ‘draw up’
(1357–60, Llibre de Cort Reial mallorquí, 277)
h. venir dessus ‘come over’
(R. Muntaner (1325–1328), Crònica, CCXLIX)
(8) a. aller ariere ‘to go back’
b. aller avant ‘to go forward’
c. courir su ‘to pursue, to attack’
d. mettre sus ‘to put on’
e. issir fors ‘to go out’
According to Rouget & Tremblay (2003), “while during Middle Ages, French
had an extensive system of separated particles used to modify the aspectual/
locative value of verbs (e.g.: issir hors), during the Renaissance, such construc-
tions had almost completely disappeared”.5 Interestingly, this was not the fate
of Italian, Spanish, Catalan, and other Romance languages, which still show
a rich range of verb-particle constructions at present. In order to show that
phrasal verbs are quite widespread in Romance languages other than Italian, it
is interesting to see that some examples from Dante’s dialect (see Masini 2006:
87–99) can also be found in Catalan and Spanish: see (9). See also Calvo Rigual
(2008) and Mateu & Rigau (2009), for more data and additional discussion.6
5. Nevertheless, nowadays phrasal verbs are used in less formal registers and non-standard
French: sauter dessus ‘to jump up’, courir après lit. ‘to run after: to pursue’, aller en ar-
rière ‘go back’, revenir en arrière ‘come back’, etc. (see Iacobini 2009: 22, and references
therein).
6. Some verbi sintagmatici can often acquire a metaphorical use based on their basic locative
meaning. For instance, It. tirare su ‘throw up’ can mean ‘build (a building)’ and ‘comfort
someone’, while Old Fr. mettre sus (lit. ‘to put on’) meant ‘to accuse’, and Cat. tirar endavant
‘throw ahead’ and Sp. sacar adelante ‘bring ahead’ mean ‘to get something off the ground’,
‘to keep something going’ or ‘to give one’s family a good start in life’. The fact that the
meaning of verb-particle constructs like It. andare avanti is literal (‘go ahead’) or figurative
(‘to make progress’) will be claimed to be irrelevant with respect to their associated l-syntactic
analyses (see Section 3).

(9) Dante’s dialect Catalan Spanish

andare avanti ‘go ahead’ anar endavant ir/salir adelante
andare fore ‘go out’ anar fora ir fuera
andare suso/su ‘go up’ anar amunt ir arriba
buttare fuori ‘throw out’ tirar fora echar fuera
discendere giù/giuso baixar avall bajar abajo
‘descend down’
gittare giù ‘throw down’ tirar avall echar abajo
mettere avanti ‘put ahead’ tirar endavant sacar adelante
tirare su ‘throw up’ tirar amunt echar arriba
uscire fuori ‘exit out’ sortir fora salir fuera
Phrasal verbs are also present in other Romance languages, as exemplified in
the sample in (10):
(10) a. Friulan (Vicario 1995):

lâ fur ‘to go out’, lâ su ‘to go up’, lâ vie ‘to go away’, montâ su
‘to go up’, etc.
b. Piedmont (Iacobini 2009):
allà via ‘to go away’, bütà giü ‘to throw down’, tirìa avanti ‘to
throw ahead’, i.e., ‘to manage’, etc.
c. Sardinian (Iacobini 2009):
besari a foras ‘to exit out’, andarei abbasciu ‘to go down/to fall’,
fuliare foras ‘to throw away’, etc.
d. Sicilian (Iacobini 2009, from Amenta 2008):
iri avanti ‘to go ahead’, ittari fuori ‘to throw away’, mèttiri iusu
‘to put down’, etc.
e. Venetan (Benincà and Poletto 2006):
ndar fora ‘go out’, buttar fora ‘throw out’, tirar su ‘bring up’,
saltar fora ‘jump up’, i.e., ‘crop up’, vegner fora ‘come out’, etc.
Although examples in (9) and (10) show that phrasal verbs can be found in
many Romance languages, it is true that Italian and other languages such as
Venetan and Friulan can indeed be considered exceptional among other Ro-
mance Languages since they have developed a pattern where the verb is not a
motion verb:7 e.g., lavare ‘to wash’, pulire ‘to clean’, fregare ‘to rub’, grattare
‘to scrape’, eliminare ‘to eliminate’, etc., and also mangiare ‘to eat’, bere ‘to
drink’, fumare ‘to smoke’, etc.; see the examples in (11) through (13). Two
particles can typically go with these verbs in Italian: via ‘away’ and fuori ‘out’.
7. Interestingly, these examples are not attested in Dante’s works (see Masini 2006), whereby
they can be considered as a more recent innovation.

However, what will be shown to be crucial in the next sections is that this in-
novative pattern is allowed in Italian (and other languages such as Venetan and
Friulan) as long as the verbal basis involves an abstract directionality compo-
nent. By contrast, Germanic languages are not subject to this lexical restriction,
whereby their verb-particle constructions are much more diverse.
(11) a. Riuscirai a lavare via il sudore.
manage-fut.2sg to wash away the sweat
‘You will manage to wash the sweat away.’
b. Voglio lavare via i miei peccati.
want.1sg wash away the my sins
‘I want to wash my sins away.’
c. Lavi fuori le scatole del pranzo ogni giorno.
wash out the box of.the lunch every day
‘Wash up your lunch box every day’.
d. Devono raschiare via la sporcizia.
must-3pl scrape away the dirt
‘They have to scrape out the dirt.’
e. L’intonaco è stato mangiato via dall’a umidità.
the plastering is been eaten away by the humidity
‘The plastering was completely damaged by the humidity.’
f. Lui ha bevuto via il vino ad un tiro.
he has drunk away the wine in one go
‘He drank the wine up all at once.’
(12) a. S-ciopa fora tuto. (Venetan)
(it) burst out everything
‘Everything is going to burst.’ (Benincà and Poletto 2006: 11)
b. El se ga magnà fora i schei.
he refl has eaten out the money
‘He spent his money.’ (Benincà and Poletto 2006: 13)
(13) Al à bevût fûr dute la butilie di bessôl. (Friulan)
he has drunk out all the bottle alone
‘He drank the bottle up on his own.’ (Vicario 1995: 191)
Having established that phrasal verbs are possible and even productive within
the Romance languages, a structural analysis remains to be provided, a non-
trivial matter as we will see immediately in the next section.
3. On the l-syntax of verbi sintagmatici
Before dealing with the l(exical)-syntax of Romance phrasal verbs, it will be

useful to sketch out Hale and Keyser’s (1998, 2002) basic elements of argument

structure, whose syntactic approach is assumed here:8 in particular, our present

analysis of Romance phrasal verbs will be shown to be inspired by Hale &
Keyser’s (2000) analysis of English complex verbs like heat up, cool down or
widen out.
As is well-known, argument structure is conceived of by Hale and Keyser
as the syntactic configuration projected by a lexical item, that is, argument
structure is the system of structural relations holding between heads (nuclei)
and the arguments linked to them. Their main assumptions can be expressed as
follows: argument structure is defined in reference to two possible relations be-
tween a head and its arguments, namely, the head-complement relation and the
head-specifier relation. A given head (i.e., x in 14) may enter into the following
structural combinations in (14): these are its argument structure properties, and
its syntactic behavior is determined by these properties.9
(14) a. x b. x c. α d. x
x y z x z α
x y α y
The main empirical domain on which Hale and Keyser’s hypotheses have been
tested includes unergative denominal verbs like dance in (15a), transitive loca-
tion verbs like shelve in (15b) or transitive locatum verbs like saddle in (15c),
and (anti)causative deadjectival verbs like clear in (15d). Unergative verbs are
argued to be hidden transitives in the sense that they involve merging a non-
relational element (typically, a noun) with a verbal head (see 16a); both lo-
cation verbs (e.g., shelve) and locatum verbs (e.g., saddle) involve merging
the structural combination in (14b) with the one in (14a): see (16b). Finally,
unaccusative verbs involve the structural combination in (14c), the causative
one involving two structural combinations,10 i.e., the one depicted in (14c) is
merged with the one in (14a): see (16c).11
8. See Zubizarreta & Oh (2007), for an excellent review of Hale & Keyser’s (1993, 2002) theory
of l(exical)-syntax.
9. According to Hale & Keyser (2002), the prototypical or unmarked morphosyntactic realiza-
tions of the x head in English are the following ones: V in (14a), P in (14b), Adj in (14c), and
N in (14d).
10. See Hale and Keyser (2002: Chap. 6) on why unaccusatives of the arrive-type do not
causativize. See also Zubizarreta and Oh (2007: 192; Fn. 14).
11. Hale and Keyser (1993, 2002) argue that the external argument is truly external to argument
structure configurations: for example, they typically appeal to this proposal when accounting
for why unacusative structures can be causativized (cf. 15d), while unergatives ones can-
not (e.g., *Mary danced John; cf. Mary made John dance). Accordingly, the external argu-
ment can be claimed to occupy the specifier position of a functional projection in so-called
“s(entential)-syntax”.

(15) a. John danced.

b. John shelved the book.
c. John saddled the horse.
d. The strong winds cleared the sky / The sky cleared.
(16) a. V
V N
[0]
/
dance
b. V
V P
[0]
/
DP P
the {book/horse} P N
[0]{shelf/saddle}
/
c. V
V V
[0]
/
DP V
the screen V A
[0]
/
clear
Applying the incorporation operation to (16a) involves copying the full phono-
logical matrix of the noun dance into the empty one corresponding to the verb.
Applying it to (16b) involves two steps: the full phonological matrix of the
noun {shelf /saddle} is first copied into the empty one corresponding to the
preposition. Since the phonological matrix corresponding to the verb is also
empty, the incorporation operation applies again from the saturated phonolog-
ical matrix of the preposition to the unsaturated matrix of the verb. Finally, ap-
plying incorporation to (16c) involves two steps as well: the full phonological
matrix of the adjective clear is first copied into the empty one corresponding
to the internal verb. Since the phonological matrix corresponding to the ex-
ternal verb is also empty, the incorporation applies again from the saturated

phonological matrix of the inner verb to the unsaturated matrix of the external
verb.
However, as pointed out by Hale & Keyser (1997, 2002), hyponymous object
constructions like the ones exemplified in (17) pose a non-trivial problem to the
previous system:
(17) a. John danced a polka. (cf. John danced)

b. John shelved the books on the windowsill. (cf. John shelved the
books)
In (17a) an overt DP (a polka) is allowed to be inserted in the position that

would in principle correspond to the trace left by incorporation of N into V.
Similarly, in (17b) an overt PP (on the windowsill) can be inserted in the posi-
tion that would correspond to the traces left behind in N and P en route to the
null V. The solution put forward by Hale & Keyser (1997) involved “delinking”
the incorporated noun from its base-generated position via “index-deletion”
(see their work for details). However, here we will not assume their trace/index-
deletion analysis but rather Haugen’s (2009) alternative proposal. In order to
avoid the cyclicity problems involved in Hale & Keyser’s (1997) analysis, Hau-
gen (2009) has recently argued for an insertion of non-cognate roots into the
upper and lower copies after a movement (i.e., Copy) operation has applied. In
particular, Haugen (2009: 248–251) argues that, once a Late Insertion account
is accepted, 12 it is possible to spell-out two different roots (e.g., √dance and
√
polka in [18]) for the purpose of expressing identical abstract syntactic fea-
tures. According to this author, the Projection Principle is not violated because
the lower copy remains coindexed with the upper copy, and no features are ever
deleted. Notice then that in his account there is a ‘trace’ of movement, i.e., a
bundle of abstract syntactic features in the lower copy. For example, dance a
polka can be analyzed as follows:13
12. See also Hale & Keyser (2002: 77–78), who point out that “arguments for late insertion of
vocabulary items, in the sense of Halle & Marantz’s (1993) theory of Distributed Morphology,
are extraordinarily compelling”. In particular, see Hale and Keyser (2002: 98), for their last
DM-like account of “denominal” verbs like dance.
13. A sentence like #John danced a table would not be ungrammatical but rather pragmatically
ill-formed: in Haugen’s (2009: 253) account the hyponymy interpretation occurs due to prag-
matic constraints.

(18) V
V DP
[α√
, β , . . . n]i
dance
D N
[α√
, β , . . . n]i
polka
According to Haugen (2009), there are two ways of forming denominal verbs:
i.e., via Incorporation or via Conflation. To put it in Haugen’s (2009: 260)
words, “Incorporation is conceived of as head-movement (as in Baker 1988;
Hale & Keyser 1993), and is instantiated through the syntactic operation of
Copy, whereas Conflation is instantiated directly through Merge (compound-
ing).” Accordingly, in Incorporation cases, the denominal verb (e.g., see 15a:
John danced) is formed via Copying the relevant set of features of the nominal
complement into the null verb. In contrast, in Conflation cases, the denominal
verb (e.g., see 19a) is formed via Compounding a nominal root with the null
verb (see 19b).14
(19) a. The factory horns sirened midday and everyone broke for lunch
(ex. from Clark & Clark 1977, apud√Borer [2005])
b. [FP [DP the factory horns] . . . [V [V siren V] [DP midday]]]
With the previous background in mind, let us deal with our analysis of Ro-
mance phrasal verbs, which is inspired by Hale & Keyser’s (2000: 45–47)
analysis of English complex verbs like heat up, cool down or widen out, whose
directional particles are claimed by them to be analyzed as “cognate” (sic)
complements of an abstract P incorporated in the verb. According to these au-
thors, it is not the case that the root heat in (20) incorporates into the particle
up; rather their claim is that this prepositional-like element is inserted into the
P head after the “simple” verb has been formed.15 Furthermore, Hale & Keyser
(2000: 45-46) point out that in (20) “P does not head a separate, autonomous
predicate. Instead, it is as if A and P jointly head one and the same predicate.
And this, like any adjectival predicate, finds its subject external to its own pro-
jection.”
14. For further discussion on the so-called Manner Conflation, see also Mateu & Rigau (2002),
Mateu (2002, 2008, 2010), McIntyre (2004), Harley (2005), Zubizarreta & Oh (2007), Acedo-
Matellán & Mateu (2008), i.a. As we will see in Section 4, this Compounding operation
accounts for the way the Manner component is introduced in Germanic phrasal verbs like the
ones exemplified in (3a) John worked his debts off and (3b) John danced the night away.
15. The upper verbal head in (20) is only posited in the causative use in (21a).

(20) V
V V
heati DP V
V P
P A
upi
Hale & Keyser (2000) put forward the proposal that the examples in (21a, b)
involve a cognation process that is similar to the one found in (17a, b): that is,
according to them, there appears to be an interesting parallelism between the
prepositional-like particle that appears in (21a, b) and the hyponymous objects
in (17a, b).
(21) a. We heated the soup up. (cf. We heated the soup)
b. The soup heated up. (cf. The soup heated)
Hale & Keyser’s (2000) analysis of “P-cognation”, modulated by Haugen’s
(2009) Late Insertion account to avoid cyclicity problems, can also be claimed
to account for the formation of Romance phrasal verbs like those in (22), i.e.,
they can all be analyzed as cases where the directional particle specifies the ab-
stract P(ath) that has been incorporated (i.e., copied) into the verb. Following
Haugen (2009), we assume that it is possible to spell-out two different roots for
the purpose of expressing the same syntactic features: i.e., the P(ath) feature in
our present case. This proposal can then be claimed to account for our main
descriptive generalization: i.e., the list of verbs that enter into the Romance
verb-particle constructions is reduced to those verbs encoding or involving di-
rectionality (e.g., see 22).
(22) It. entrare dentro, lit. ‘enter in’; uscire fuori, lit. ‘exit out’; mettere giù
‘put down’; buttare via ‘throw away’; lavare via ‘wash away’, etc.
We exemplify the l-syntactic analysis of lavare via ‘wash away’ in (23),16
which is intended to capture Masini’s (2005) observation that the verbal basis
16. See Hale & Keyser (2000; 2002), for arguments distinguishing causative constructions (e.g.,
[15d] and [21a]) from transitive ones (e.g., [15b,c] and [23]): for example, only the former
enter into the causative alternation, a fact that is presumably related to its having a double
verbal shell.

of lavare ‘wash’ involves a directional meaning. We argue that its occurrence

in a Romance language like Italian would otherwise be impossible. The anal-
ysis of (23) also captures Svenonius’s (1996) proposal, assumed by Hale &
Keyser (2002: 229–230), that bare particles like via ‘away’ can be analyzed as
prepositions that incorporate a complement (i.e., the Ground): such a proposal
is coherent with maintaining the birelational nature of P.17
(23) V
V P
[+P(ath)]i
√
lavare DP P
P X
[+P(ath)]i
√
via
In the next section, we deal with Mateu & Rigau’s (2002, 2009) l-syntactic
reformulation of Talmy’s (1991, 2000) typology and the differences between
the Romance and Germanic patterns of phrasal verbs.
4. Romance phrasal verbs do not involve the Germanic co-event pattern
In this section we show to what extent it is mistaken to claim (i) that Italian
phrasal verbs do not conform to Talmy’s (1985, 1991, 2000) generalization
with respect to Romance languages and (ii) that they are similar to Germanic
phrasal verbs (cf. Gràcia 1988; Simone 1996; Masini 2005; Iacobini & Masini
2007; Iacobini 2009, among others).
As is well-known, Talmy points out that the Germanic family belongs to
the class of so-called “satellite-framed languages”, whereas the Romance one
belongs to that of “verb-framed languages”. Consider some paradigmatic ex-
amples of his typology in (24), where Path is a prepositional satellite around
17. For the time being, we do not have a specific proposal on why the particle is typically adjacent
to the verb in Italian (see Masini 2008): cf. (i). See also Vinka (1999) and den Dikken (2003),
for similar facts in Swedish.
(i) a. * Gianni ha lavato la macchia via.

Gianni has washed the stain away
b. Gianni ha lavato via la macchia.

the verb in (24a), but is incorporated into the verb in the Spanish example in
(24b):
(24) a. The bottle floated into the cave.
b. La botella entró en la cueva flotando.
the bottle entered in the cave floating
‘The bottle entered the cave floating.’
As argued by Talmy, English can typically be taken as an example of satellite-
framed language, whereas Spanish can typically be regarded as an example
of verb-framed language. To put it in Talmy’s (1985) terms, (24a) involves
conflation of Motion with Manner, or alternatively, in Talmy’s (1991) terms,
(24a) involves conflation of MOVE with a SUPPORTING [EVENT]. In contrast,
the corresponding counterpart of (24a) in a Romance language like Spanish
(see 24b) involves a different lexicalization pattern, i.e., Motion is fused with
Path, the Manner component (or the Co-event) being expressed as adjunct.
Before dealing with the question as to whether Romance phrasal verbs are
counterexamples to Talmy’s typology, it will be useful to show how the relevant
canonical patterns exemplified in (24) are analyzed in our syntactic framework.
In particular, our proposal is that the relevant l-syntactic analyses of (24a) and
(24b) can be depicted as in (25) and (26), respectively.18
(25) The Co-event pattern
V
DP V
The bottle
V Pdir
√
float V Pdir Ploc
/ inloc -to
[0]
Ploc DP
in- the cave
18. For the syntactic distinction between directional vs. locative prepositions, see Koopman
(2000), Hale & Keyser (2002), den Dikken (2006), Zubizarreta & Oh (2007), and Mateu
(2008), among others. Such a distinction could be claimed to be read off the mere syntactic
structure: cf. Hale & Keyser (2002: 221–224).

(26) The Path pattern

V
DP V
La botella
V Pdir
Pdir V Pdir Ploc

entró
Ploc DP
en la cueva
The so-called “Co-event pattern” of Germanic languages is to be related to
the fact that, for example, the complex P element into in (25) is not incorpo-
rated in the verb,
√ this null verb being allowed to be merged or compounded
with the root float .19 As a result, this unaccusative V(erb), whose config-
urational/constructional meaning is that of Change (see Hale & Keyser 2002;
Zubizarreta & Oh 2007), turns out to be associated with an additional embed-
ded meaning, that of floating, where the root encodes what Talmy (1991, 2000)
refers to as “Co-event”. Concerning (26), the incorporation of the complex di-
rectional P element into a null unaccusative verb in a Romance language like
Spanish gives a Path verb (entrar ‘enter’), the adjunct flotando (‘floating’) be-
ing merged outside the main argument structure.20
Assuming this Talmian background,21 we can now show why it makes more
sense to claim that Romance phrasal verbs belong to the (otherwise typolog-
ically expected) Path pattern rather than to the (Germanic) Co-event pattern.
19. See also Mateu & Rigau (2002), McIntyre (2004), and Zubizarreta & Oh (2007), for similar
analyses.
20. As can be inferred from the English translation of the Spanish example in (24b), a similar
analysis holds for the Romance pattern involved in enter the cave floating (versus cf. the Ger-
manic pattern: float into the cave). Accordingly, the Path lexicalization pattern is also found
in (the Romance lexicon of) English: for additional discussion of other apparent counterex-
amples, see Talmy (1985, 2000).
21. See also Zubizarreta & Oh (2007), for an insightful account of these crosslinguistic dif-
ferences, which is based on Snyder’s (2001) Compounding Parameter (cf. also McIntyre
[2004]): according to them, Romance cannot use the relevant Compound Rule (“Merge two
lexical categories of the same categorical type”) to compose Manner and Directed Motion in
the way Germanic does; see also Mateu and Rigau (2002), for the claim that the Co-event
pattern in (25) involves a V-V compound. Notice the happy coincidence between these l-
syntactic proposals and Haugen’s (2009) (re)definition of Conflation as Compounding (pace
Hale & Keyser 2002). Since the Talmian Co-event pattern always involves Conflation (i.e.,
Compounding), we have a very interesting connection between Talmy’s (1991, 2000) typol-
ogy and Snyder’s (2001) Compounding Parameter (see Mateu [2010], for an elaboration of
this connection).

Indeed, such a claim is coherent with the main descriptive generalization intro-
duced above: Romance languages (and more generally, so-called “verb-framed
languages”) lack complex resultative(like) constructions where the verb is cru-
cially non-directional, i.e., the verb does not involve directionality (e.g., see the
examples in [27]). Basically, our structural account of this descriptive fact is
that Talmy’s verb-framed languages lack the l-syntactic pattern in (25) since in
these languages it is the embedded/inner Path (and not an independent/external
root) what typically provides the relevant null verb with phonological content
(see Mateu & Rigau [2002, 2009], for additional discussion).
(27) a. John danced into the room.
b. John danced away.
c. John danced the puppet across the stage.
d. John danced the night away.
e. John outdanced Mary.
f. John danced his debts off.
g. John danced his feet sore.
h. John danced his way into a wonderful world.
Despite their surface similarity, our claim is then that the l-syntax of Italian
verbi sintagmatici is different from the one of those English phrasal verbs that
involve the Talmian Co-event pattern. As pointed out in the previous section,
the verbal basis of Romance verb-particle constructions encodes or involves
a directional meaning, which is further specified through a prepositional-like
element. In contrast, as can be shown by the English examples in (28), this
restriction does not hold in Germanic. Such an observation is crucial in or-
der to properly understand the truly relevant differences between Italian and
English.22
See also Horrocks & Stavrou (2007), for an alternative explanation of the parametric dif-
ferences which is mainly based on the interesting observation that those languages that
grammaticalize viewpoint aspect in their verb morphology (e.g., Greek and Romance) reject
resultative-like constructions like those in (27).
Finally, it would take us too far afield to review the vast literature where Talmy’s typology
has been criticized and/or refined (see Beavers et al. [2009], for a recent attempt). As pointed
out above, our present goal is much more modest: i.e., to work out to what extent Romance
phrasal verbs are similar to Germanic ones. Unlike other authors (e.g., Beavers et al. [2009]),
we conclude that they are not similar in an important sense related to Talmy’s typology.
22. Unfortunately, Talmy often grounds his typology on surface facts, whereby he mistakenly
admits that Northern Italian dialects are an exception to his typological classification of Ro-
mance languages. See Talmy (2000:145; Fn. 60): “Southern Italian dialects have a Path con-
flation pattern, Northern dialects have a Co-event conflation pattern, and central dialects, in-
cluding standard Italian, have both patterns in parallel, with discourse factors determining the
pattern used”.

(28) a. John danced the night away.

b. John outdanced Mary.
c. John worked the night away.
d. John outworked Mary.
As noted, examples like those in (28) are not to be found in Romance: this
should not be surprising since in these cases the verbal basis does not lexically
involve a directional meaning. Rather the Germanic constructions exemplified
in (28) involve a complex l-syntactic structure like the one in (29) where the
phonological matrix of the relevant null verb has been saturated by the full
one of an independent root via Conflation/Compounding, the P(ath) being a
complete satellite.23
(29) The Co-event pattern

V
V P
√
dance V DP P
[0]
/ the night
P X
away
We think that Talmy’s (1991, 2000) descriptive term satellite is quite mis-
leading when dealing with the differences between Germanic and Romance
phrasal verbs. Since the particle is a prepositional-like satellite in both linguis-
tic families, both patterns of phrasal verbs could in principle be classified as
“satellite-framed”. Given this, we prefer to use Talmy’s expression “Co-event
pattern” rather than the more usual “satellite-framed pattern” when referring
to the Germanic pattern. Accordingly, we propose that the relevant typological
difference is not the one exemplified by light verbs plus a directional satellite
However, it is the case that even Northern Italian dialects can be claimed to lack the Germanic
Co-event pattern (cf. Masini [2005] and Iacobini [2009] for interesting arguments against
the so-called “Germanic hypothesis” according to which the origin of Italian phrasal verbs
depends on a calque from the German language). As expected, Northern Italian dialects lack
examples like the ones in (27) or (28), which shows the requirement that Talmy’s Co-event
pattern (and, more generally, all his descriptive lexicalization patterns) be formulated within a
more explanatory theory. In our present case, we assume that Hale & Keyser’s (2002) theory
of l-syntax can provide us with a more adequate level of abstraction to deal with Talmy’s
typology (see Mateu & Rigau 2002; 2009).
23. See Svenonius (1996), Hale & Keyser (2002), and Mateu (2008), among others, for the claim
that intransitive particles like the one exemplified in (29) incorporate their Ground comple-
ment (X).

(both families have this type: e.g., go away / It. andare via), but the one ex-
emplified by pure (i.e., non-directional) manner verbs plus a satellite, the latter
being present in Germanic but not in Romance (e.g., float/dance/. . . away vs.
It. *galleggiare/ballare/. . . via). Following this trend, consider the clear con-
trast in (2), repeated below in (30), which, as argued by Folli & Ramchand
(2005), can be accounted for by positing that correre ‘to run’ (unlike danzare
‘to dance’) optionally encodes a Result feature: according to their dual classi-
fication of Italian manner of motion verbs in (31), the verbs in (31a) optionally
encode a R(esult) feature, while the ones in (31b) do not.
Gianni is run away
‘Gianni ran away.’ (cf. It. Gianni ha corso ‘Gianni ran’)
b. * Gianni è danzato via.
Gianni is danced away
‘Gianni danced away.’
(31) a. [+V, (+Result)] verbs b. [+v, +V] verbs
correre ‘run’ galleggiare ‘float’
rotolare ‘roll’ camminare ‘walk’
rimbalzare ‘bounce’ galoppare ‘gallop’
scivolare ‘lide, slide’ danzare ‘dance’
gattonare ‘crawl’ nuotare ‘swim’
saltae ‘jump’ sciare ‘ski’
volare ‘fly passeggiare ‘walk around’
saltellare ‘hop’ vagabondare ‘wander’
(ex. from Folli and Ramchand 2005)
Our present proposal is that Folli & Ramchand’s (2005) [+R(esult)] feature
can in fact be related to our more general Talmian P(ath) component.24 As pre-
dicted by Talmy’s typology, Italian pure manner verbs (e.g., verbs like It. dan-
zare ‘to dance’ or camminare ‘to walk’) do not involve directionality, whereby
they are excluded from complex telic path of motion constructions: cf. It. *dan-
zare via vs. ok dance away; It. *camminare via vs. ok walk away, etc. On the
other hand, the existence of complex verbs like It. correre via ‘run away’ (see
[32a]) must not be taken as a true counterexample to Talmy’s typology (at least
as we reformulate it here) since correre in the unaccusative structure can also
be claimed to involve P(ath) (or R(esult), in Folli and Ramchand’s terms: see
[31a]). In other words, dance away falls under the Co-event pattern (cf. the
24. Following the “localist hypothesis”, which is assumed by Talmy (1991, 2000), it is interesting
to point out that “Result” can be understood as an abstract variant of telic “Path” (for an l-
syntactic reinterpretation of this hypothesis, see Mateu [2008]).

l-syntactic analysis in [29]), while It. correre via ‘run away’ can be claimed
to fall under the Path pattern in (32b). That is to say, our present analysis of
unaccusative verb-particle constructions like It. correre via is not so different
from the analysis of transitive ones like It. lavare via ‘wash away’ (see Section
3):25 in both cases the directional particle specifies the abstract P(ath) feature
that has been incorporated (i.e., copied) into the verb. As noted, this analysis
can be claimed to account for our main descriptive generalization: i.e., the list
of verbs that enter into Romance verb-particle constructions is reduced to those
verbs that encode or involve Path.26
Gianni is run away
‘Gianni ran away.’
25. To be sure, there is an important difference between the transitive argument structure in (23)
and the unaccusative one in (32b): i.e., the subject is external in the first case, but internal in
the second one (see Hale and Keyser [2002] and Zubizarreta & Oh [2007], for more discussion
of this structural difference within the l-syntactic theory).
26. Our claim is then that there is a similar explanation for the existence of unaccusative verb-
particle constructions like It. correre via ‘run away’ and transitive ones like It. lavare via
‘wash away’: both constructions involve directional manner verbs that acquire the P(ath)
component in l-syntax. However, for an alternative analysis of the unaccusative use of those
Italian verbs in (31a), see Zubizarreta and Oh (2007: Chap. 3), who explore the following
hypothesis in (i):
(i) Italian recruits the auxiliary position designated for a class of restructuring verbs in
order to compose ‘directed motion’ and ‘manner’ (in some lexically restricted cases
[cf. 31a])
For reasons of space, we will not review their analysis here: we will limit ourselves to pointing
out that in Zubizarreta and Oh’s (2007: chap. 3) analysis the parallelism between transitive
phrasal verbs like lavare via and unaccusative ones like correre via remains unaccounted
for. By contrast, Folli and Ramchand’s (2005) analysis could account for this parallelism by
positing that both correre-type verbs and lavare-type verbs optionally encode the [+R(esult)]
feature in their lexical entry:
(ii) a. Gianni ha lavato la camicia. ([+Result] is not involved in the activity use)
‘Gianni washed the shirt.’
b. Gianni ha lavato via la macchia. ([+Result] is involved in the accomplishment
use)

b. V
DP V
Gianni
V P
[+P(ath)]i
√
run P X
[+P(ath)]i
√
via
Accordingly, the Italian verbs in (31a) have two different l-syntactic structures
available: the unaccusative one in (32b), where the verb acquires a P(ath) fea-
ture, and the less complex unergative one in (33b), where the verb does not
encode Path. In contrast, the Italian verbs in (31b) only allow the unergative
l-syntactic structure in (33b), which corresponds to Hale and Keyser’s creation
structure in (16a): e.g., [V do dance].27
(33) a. Gianni ha corso.
‘Gianni ran.’
b. V
V X
Interestingly, the following data in (34) drawn from Sorace (2000: 875–876)
seem to point to the fact that the verb correre in its unaccusative use encodes
Path. The unaccusative use of correre is not fully excluded in cases where
there is a locative or adverbial phrase: according to Sorace, the auxiliary essere
is marginally possible in (34a–b). We take this fact as evidence that the verb
correre in its unaccusative use acquires the Path feature in l-syntax. In contrast,
those pure (i.e., non-directional) manner verbs like It. nuotare ‘to swim’ or
danzare ‘to dance’ do not follow this pattern (see [35]): i.e., the verbs in (31b)
only have an unergative/transitive use, whereby the auxiliary essere is excluded
in all contexts.
27. Our Italian consultants have told us that it is not the case that all verbs in the list in (31a)
(e.g., gattonare ‘crawl’) can be found in unaccusative contexts (contra Folli & Ramchand
2005). For those speakers, gattonare would then be included in the list in (31b). Since we are
dealing with lexical-syntactic facts, this kind of variation is expected. See also Zubizarreta &
Oh (2007: 196; Fn. 37), for similar remarks.

(34) a. Gli atleti svedesi hanno corso / ? sono corsi alle

the athletes Swedish have run / are run at.the
Olimpiadi.
Olympic-Games
‘The Swedish athletes ran at the Olympic Games.’
b. Maria ha corso / è corsa velocemente.
Maria has run / is run fast
‘Maria ran fast.’
(ex. from Sorace 2000: 875–876)
(35) a. Gli atleti {hanno nuotato / *sono nuotati} alle
the athletes have swum / are swum at.the
Olimpiadi.
Olympic-Games
‘The athletes swam at the Olympic Games.’
b. Gianni {ha / *è} nuotato velocemente.
Gianni has / is swum quickly
‘Gianni swam quickly.’
Furthermore, if our analysis of the Germanic vs. Romance differences is on the

right track, the interesting contrasts in (36) through (39) can also be explained
on the basis that the Romance verbal bases in these examples do involve a
directional component, while the English corresponding ones do not: indeed,
this difference would account for why the directional phrase cannot be omitted
in the English examples.
(36) a. John washed the stain ?? (away).

b. Gianni ha lavato (via) la macchia. (Italian)
(37) a. John wiped the fingerprints *(from the table/away . . . ).
b. Juan fregó las huellas (de la mesa). (Spanish)
Juan wiped the fingerprints (of the table)
‘Juan wiped the fingerprints from the table.’
(38) a. John wiped the dust *(from the table).
b. Jean a essuyé la poussière (de la table). (French)
Jean has wiped the dust (of the table)
‘Jean wiped the dust from the table.’
(39) a. John wiped the stains *(from the door).
b. En Joan fregà les taques (de la porta). (Catalan)
the Joan wiped the stains (of the door)
‘Joan wiped the stains from the door.’

The ungrammaticality of the English examples in (36a) to (39a) would then run
parallel to that of (40). As shown by Hoekstra (1988), the resultative PP/AP is
compulsory in (40) since it is the Small Clause Result predicate (and not the
verb) that licenses the direct object as its argument.
(40) a. John danced the night *(away).

b. John *(out)danced Mary.
c. He talked us *(into a stupor).
d. The dog barked the chickens *(awake).
Mutatis mutandis, we argue that the English PP’s in (36a) to (39a) have the
same function the resultative PP/AP has in (40): the presence of PP/PartP is
compulsory in (36a) through (39a) in order to license the direct object, which
expresses the stuff that is removed.28 In contrast, the Romance verb in (36b)
through (39b) can be argued to incorporate the abstract predicative head of the
SC-like resultative structure which encodes the Path. Given this, the Romance
counterpart of wipe in (36b) through (39b) means ‘remove/get out’: cf. John
[V+Pi [SC/PP {the stain/the fingerprints/the dust} Pi ]]. No further PP is then
necessary in (36b) through (39b) to license the inner SC-like predicate, since
such a licensing is carried out via the incorporation of the Path head of the SC-
like PP into the verb. We claim that the Small Clause Result-based account just
presented can also be nicely translated into Hale & Keyser’s (2002) theory of l-
syntax: given this, the English examples in (36a) to (39a) involve the l-syntactic
pattern depicted in (41).
28. For metonymy reasons, wash the stain without the directional PP (see 36a) could be coerced
to have an additional reading where the internal argument is not the removed stuff but the
surface, i.e., it could have a reading similar to the one involved in wash the shirt, the latter
corresponding to a different pattern (i.e., [PROVIDE [the shirt WITH a wash]]; see Hale &
Keyser [2002] and Mateu [2002]).
See also Rappaport Hovav & Levin (1998: 118–122), for an alternative semantic explanation
of the ill-formedness of examples like the one in (ia):
(i) a. John swept the crumbs *(off the table).

(Cf. John wiped the fingerprints *(away/from the table))
b. John swept the floor.
(Cf. John wiped the table)
Interestingly, John swept the crumbs is grammatical in Romance: e.g., Sp. John barrió las
migas, ‘John swept the crumbs’. Since sweep in (ia) lacks a directional component, the Path
PP is obligatory in English. In contrast, Sp. barrer ‘to sweep’ is a directional manner verb in
barrer las migas, whereby the Path PP is not necessary in Spanish. As predicted by Talmy’s
typology, Sp. barrer, but not Engl. sweep, is allowed to acquire a Path component in the
directional context of barrer las migas (cf. Sp. quitar las migas ‘get+out the crumbs’) but not
in the activity context of barrer el suelo ‘sweep the floor’ (see ib).

(41) V
V P
√
√ wash V DP P
scrape the stain
the dirt
P X
??/*(away/off/. . . )
The Germanic l-syntactic pattern in (41) should be distinguished from the Ro-
mance one in (23), where the Italian verb lavare ‘wash’ can be claimed to
acquire an abstract directionality (see Section 3): the Co-event pattern is in-
volved in (41) and is not found in Romance, as predicted by Talmy’s typology.
Despite appearances, no continuum but a discrete structural difference is in-
volved here.
Another similar piece of empirical evidence that we are dealing with two
different patterns is provided by the contrast in (42). The particle in the English
construction in (42a) is compulsory (see Folli & Harley [2005]), while this is
not the case in Italian: examples like the ones in (42c) and (42d), which were
found via a Google search, are judged as well-formed by our native consultants
of Italian (pace Folli & Harley 2005). Accordingly, the l-syntactic structures for
these constructions can be claimed to be different: i.e., the Co-event pattern is
involved in (43), while the Path pattern is the relevant one in (44).
(42) a. The sea ate the beach *(away).

b. Il mare si è mangiato via enormi quantità di
the sea refl is eaten away big quantity of
sabbia.
sand
‘The sea ate a big quantity of sand away.’
c. ok Il mare ha mangiato una buona parte della costa.
the sea has eaten a big part of.the shore
‘The sea ate a big part of the shore away.’
d. ok Il mare ha mangiato gran parte di spiaggia
the sea has eaten big part of beach
sabbiosa ed ha lasciato . . .
sandy and has left . . .
‘The sea ate a big part of the sandy beach away and left. . . ’

(43) V
V P
√
eat V DP P
P X
*(away)
(44) V
V P
[+P(ath)]i
√
mangiare DP P
P X
[+P(ath)]
√ i
( via)
To conclude, it is worth emphasizing that Hale & Keyser’s (1998, 2002) syn-
tactic theory of argument structure has allowed us to provide an abstract single
explanation for the crosslinguistic contrasts in (36) to (39) and (42), which in-
volve apparently different lexical-semantic classes (i.e., removal and consump-
tion).
5. Concluding remarks
Verb-particle constructions are not a quirk of Italian but can also be found
in other Romance languages (see also Iacobini [2009] and Mateu & Rigau
[2009]). We agree with Iacobini’s (2009: 25) claim that “[Italian] differs from
the other major Romance languages not in the type of structures used to express
motion events but in their frequency and usage”. However, there is an important
methodological difference between Iacobini and Masini’s (2007) Construction
Grammar approach and our l-syntactic account: frequency and usage are not
essential factors that guide our present structural account. In other words, what
is crucial for us is not the actuation fact that phrasal verbs are more frequent
and productive in Italian (dialects) rather than in other Romance languages, but
the competence fact that Romance phrasal verbs are not of the Germanic Co-
event type: Romance lacks the Germanic type that involves a pure (i.e., non-
directional) manner verb plus a non-adjunct Path (e.g., see [3]; cf. [28]). Quite
importantly, we argue that this systematicity is not due to frequency, usage or

other performance factors but to a structural one, which is captured by our l-

syntactic reformulation of Talmy’s (1991, 2000) typology of motion events. We
therefore conclude that it is mistaken to claim that Romance verb-particle con-
structions are exceptional with respect to Talmy’s (1985, 1991, 2000) typolog-
ical classification of Romance languages (pace Masini [2005, 2006], Iacobini
[2009] and Masini & Iacobini [2007]).
Following Haugen’s (2009) syntactic distinction between Incorporation and
Conflation, we have drawn some relevant syntactic differences between Ro-
mance and Germanic verb-particle constructions: phrasal verbs of the Talmian
Co-event type have been argued to involve Conflation (i.e., Compounding).
Following syntactic approaches to so-called Manner Conflation (cf. Mateu &
Rigau 2002; McIntyre 2004; Harley 2005; Zubizarreta & Oh 2007), phrasal
verbs like those in (3) and (28) are expected to be possible in Germanic but not
in Romance; only those ones formed via P(ath) Incorporation (i.e., Copy) are
expected to be possible in Romance.
To conclude, we hope that the present abstract (i.e., non-surface-based) l-
syntactic explanations will contribute to show the usefulness of syntactic ap-
proaches to argument structure (see Hale & Keyser 2002; Ramchand & Sveno-
nius 2002; Folli & Ramchand 2005; Harley 2005; Zubizarreta & Oh 2007;
Mateu & Rigau 2002, among others).
Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (Centre de Lingüística Teòrica)

jaume.mateu@uab.cat
gemma.rigau@uab.cat
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Verb Particle Constructions in Romance A Lexical Syntactic Account PDF

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Verb-particle constructions in Romance:

JAUME MATEU AND GEMMA RIGAU

It has been pointed out that verb-particle constructions fascinate syntacticians

Probus 22 (2010), 241–269 0921–4771/10/022-0241

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finds different proposals in a vast literature, which is mostly about Germanic

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The organization of the paper is as follows: in Section 2 we show that

2. Romance phrasal verbs: A Pan-Romance phenomenon

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d. pujar sus ‘rise up’

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(9) Dante’s dialect Catalan Spanish

(10) a. Friulan (Vicario 1995):

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3. On the l-syntax of verbi sintagmatici

Before dealing with the l(exical)-syntax of Romance phrasal verbs, it will be

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structure, whose syntactic approach is assumed here:8 in particular, our present

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(15) a. John danced.

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(17) a. John danced a polka. (cf. John danced)

In (17a) an overt DP (a polka) is allowed to be inserted in the position that

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of lavare ‘wash’ involves a directional meaning. We argue that its occurrence

4. Romance phrasal verbs do not involve the Germanic co-event pattern

(i) a. * Gianni ha lavato la macchia via.

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(26) The Path pattern

Pdir V Pdir Ploc

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(28) a. John danced the night away.

(29) The Co-event pattern

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(34) a. Gli atleti svedesi hanno corso / ? sono corsi alle

Furthermore, if our analysis of the Germanic vs. Romance differences is on the

(36) a. John washed the stain ?? (away).

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(40) a. John danced the night *(away).

(i) a. John swept the crumbs *(off the table).

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(42) a. The sea ate the beach *(away).

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other performance factors but to a structural one, which is captured by our l-

Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (Centre de Lingüística Teòrica)

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Hoekstra, Teun. 1988. Small clause results. Lingua 74. 101–139.

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