This book investigates the systematic correspondences between syntactic structure and semantic interpretation in the domain of predicate-argument relationships. Taking Scottish Gaelic as its empirical base, the book provides a detailed working out of a semantic system of argument classification which moves away from lexically-driven thematic roles in the traditional sense and towards a more constrained, syntactically motivated, set of primitives.

The relationship between the meaning of words and the structure of sentences is an important area of research in linguistics. Studying the connections between lexical conceptual meaning and event structural relations, this book arrives at a modular classification of verb types within English and across languages. Ramchand argues that lexical encyclopedic content and event structural aspects of meaning need to be systematically distinguished, and that thematic and aspectual relations belong to the latter domain of meaning. The book proposes a syntactic decompositional view of core verbal...

A new theory of the syntax-semantics interface that relies on hierarchical orderings in language, with the English auxiliary system as its empirical ground.