Objects in motion verb phrases

This article investigates the syntactic and semantic relationship between the unselected object and the unergative verb in examples like Mary waltzed John around the room. Current consensus holds that this sentence involves resultative secondary predication, so that it is structurally equivalent to resultatives like Mary sang her throat hoarse. Yet it is well known that the waltz vs. sing verb phrase structures do not have the same argument or event structural interpretations. Notably the object with waltz seems to be an agent, while the object with sing is a patient or theme. Previous studies propose lexical rules of composition associated with waltz to specify the “special” interpretation of its object. In this article I show that the waltz object is not formally agentive, but has (what I call) an in motion interpretation. I further show that the waltz and sing verb phrases have different syntactic structures: the waltz verb phrase is transitive, and is not resultative. I argue that the contrast in interpretation between the object of waltz and sing (and the other differences in these clauses) follows from this structural difference, and that a lexical approach overgenerates. I conclude that the interpretation of the waltz object accords with regular rules of syntax-semantics correspondence.