Introducing agents by binding indices: Implications for subjectless presuppositions and agent entailments.

Abstract

(Bale 2007) argues, on the basis of the differential availability of subjectless repetitive presuppositions with again with certain verb classes, that the agent argument of eventive transitive verbs is introduced VP-externally (Kratzer 1996), but that the agent argument of intranstive and stative transitive verbs must be taken as a true argument by the verb. We challenge Bale’s claim from two directions. First, we observe that two classes of eventive transitive verbs, resist subjectless presuppositions with again. Second, we show that the unavailability of subjectless presuppositions with these and other verb classes is not an ironclad argument against severing agents from their verbs generally, and, develop a semantic analysis, inspired by an analysis of stative transitive verbs due to Hale & Keyser (2002), on which the relevant classes of verbs inherently make reference to the agent of their event argument in the form of an anaphoric index. This index is subsequently bound by a functional head that introduces the agent argument. The facts and analysis proposed here have wider theoretical implications for the way agents qua external arguments are introduced in general, suggesting that verbs of certain classes and VP-external functional heads may both play crucial roles in the syntactic introduction of the agent argument and its interaction with sublexical modifiers like again.