The Category P Features, Projections, Interpretation

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(16) matanot ka’ele kašot le-xaluka le-yeladim
gifts as-these difficult to-distributing to-children
“Such gifts are difficult to hand over to children.”
.
5.2.4 The external argument of e-N
The external argument of an e-N, as opposed to the external argument of a verb,
can be phonetically realized, but it does not have to. This is illustrated for Hebrew
Construct State (CS) and Free State (FS) e-Ns in (17a) and (17b), respectively:
(17) a. harisat ha-cava et ha-ir/ harisat ha-ir
destruction the-army Acc the-city/destruction the-city
b. ha-harisa šel ha-cava et ha-ir/ ha-harisa šel ha-ir
the-destruction of the-army Acc the-city/ the-destruction of the-city
“the (army’s) destruction of the city”
In the le-NP sequence, the external argument is never phonetically realized,
either as a full DP or as a pronominal clitic (similarly to the internal one, see 5.2.3):
(18) *ha-sefer kal/kaše le-kri’a-ti/ šel dan /šel-i
the-book easy/difficult to-reading-my/of Dan/of-I
Intended meaning: “The book is difficult [for Dan/me to read].”
Thus, the question that arose regarding the non-realized internal argument, arises
here as well: Does the external argument exist? Since the realization of the external
argument is optional, an additional question arises: Is the implicit Agent in subjectless
e-Ns realized syntactically as a null element (PRO) (cf. Chomsky 1986, Siloni 1994),
or this theta-role saturated in the lexicon (Williams 1985), along lines proposed by
Szabolcsi (1992, 1994). I will follow the latter, as it is consistent with the approach to
e-Ns developed in Grimshaw (1990). 13
Grimshaw (1990) argues that the suppressed external argument in the argument
structure of an e-N licenses adjunct by-phrases or possessor phrases (referred to as A-
adjuncts):
13 See Siloni (1997) for the advantages of the lexical approach in accounting for the properties of the
nominals.