The Category P Features, Projections, Interpretation

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3.2 The proposal
Inspired by Dowty (1991), I propose that PP-verbs denote verbal concepts
which, in some sense, are less transparent than others. Consider again the contrast in
(6) repeated in (15). In (15a) we know exactly what happened to the stone, it moved
as a result of the event denoted by the verb ba’at (‘kicked’). Thus in (15a) the
movement of the stone is entailed. There is no such entailment in (15b). All we know
for sure is that Dan’s foot touched the stone (with force).
(15) a. dan ba’at et ha-even
Dan kicked Acc the-stone
b. dan ba’at ba-even
Dan kicked in+the-stone
I do not suggest that all PP-verbs are non-transparent in the same way, but rather
that they are non-transparent in some way or another. Since the non-transparency is
semantic (i.e. it is related to the verb’s meaning), it is plausible to assume that it stems
from the thematic structure of the verb. Inspired by Reinhart (2000, 2001, 2002), I
advance the hypothesis in (16):
(16) The underspecification hypothesis
The internal theta-role of PP-verbs is not fully specified.
Given (16), the following question arises: What has to be specified? Before I
answer it, a short digression regarding the theta-roles is in order.
3.2.1 Theta roles
Thematic relations were posited by Gruber (1965) as the basic structural
relations at a ‘Pre-lexical’ semantic level of representation. A common way to talk
about thematic relations with respect to a given verb is to name the theta-roles a given
verb assigns to its arguments, Agent, Cause, Patient, Theme, Experiencer, Goal, Source
and Instrument. It is further assumed that the mapping between the semantic titles and
the syntactic structure is quite systematic and predictable (Belletti and Rizzi 1988;