The Category P Features, Projections, Interpretation

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.
Following Reinhart (2000) and Reinhart and Siloni (2003), in order to be
realized syntactically, an Instrument requires the presence of either an explicit Agent
or an implicit argument interpretable as an Agent. 15 As can be seen in (23), when the
external argument is indeed not part of the argument structure (e.g. unaccusative
verbs, Reinhart 2000), an Instrument cannot be added:
(23) a. *The vase broke with the hammer.
break: Theme ([-c-m])
Compare b. Bart broke the vase with the hammer.
break: Cause ([+c]), Theme ([-c-m])
Given this, the grammaticality of (22) shows that the Agent is present in the
thematic grid of the e-N introduced by le-. The question remains as to why it does not
license the by-phrase. I will answer it in the next section (5.3).
It is worth noting here that this state of affairs is reminiscent of middle
constructions (Tali Siloni p.c.). A middle verb does not license a by-phrase (24a), but
an Instrument is grammatical (24b) (Marelj 2002): 16
(24) a. ha-se’ar šel saša mistarek (le-amir)/*al-yedey amir be-koši 17
the-hair of Sacha combs to-Amir/by Amir in-difficulty
b. ha-se’ar šel saša lo mistarek be-masrek ze
the-hair of Sacha not combs in-comb this
“Sacha’s hair does not comb with this comb.”
In sum, an e-N introduced by le- has an Agent, but its syntactic status is not
identical to the status of this argument in a “regular” e-N (i.e. one outside the object
gap context).
15 In addition to the Agent theta-role ([+c+m]), theta-roles Cause ([+c]) or Mental ([+m]), which are
unspecified for /m or /c, respectively, do not exclude a [+c+m] interpretation (see Reinhart 2000, and
chapter 3).
16 Further comparison between middles and object gap nominals is beyond the scope of the study.
17 In Hebrew middles the implicit Agent can be introduced by le- (‘for’/‘to’) (Goldshlach and
Hershman 2001).