Title Pending 9522

This is an accepted article with a DOI pre-assigned that is not yet published.This study focuses on a group of so-called extent verbs (Gawron 2009) in Spanish (cf. rodear 'surround', cubrir 'cover' or bordear 'border') that show an alternation between an eventive and a stative reading, related to an argument structure alternation: they are eventive with agentive subjects, but stative with non-agentive subjects. As we extensively demonstrate, the eventive version has a composite denotation: it includes a change-of-state and a subsequent (target) state (Kratzer 2000). The stative version, in turn, denotes a state that corresponds to the target state included in the denotation of the eventive version. We offer a non-derivational account of this alternation following a neo-constructionist approach to argument/event structure as the one proposed in Ramchand (2018). Based on a series of diagnostics, we claim that extent verbs may enter two different structural configurations that are clearly connected: one which lacks the subeventive projection that licenses eventivity (i.e., Proc) and the subeventive projection that conveys causativity (i.e., Init), expressing a non-causative state (State) that extends along a delimited path (Path + Place); and one which also conveys causation and eventivity (Init + Proc), giving rise to a telic change of state. In both cases, the external argument is licensed by a dedicated projection (Evt), but it is configurationally interpreted as the entity that ensures that the state holds in the former case and as an Initiator in the latter. The proposal has theoretical implications regarding (non-)agentivity, causativity, the locus of the external argument, and the availability of verbal and adjectival passives.