Event paths, conflation, argument structure, and VP shells

I discuss the semantics and syntax of a phenomenon often called 'lexical subordination ' and here called 'conflation', in which a VP with a single verb expresses both an activity and a result predication, although only the former is licensed by the verb's permanent lexical entry. Alongside standard cases such as resultatives and particle verbs, I discuss what I call ‘event path structures ’ in English and German. In these, an activity is argued to conflate with a predication expressing a (sometimes metaphoric) ‘path ’ of the activity. These little-known data challenge many argument structure theories because the path expressions sometimes disallow the linking of the verb’s normal object. They require a theory where the lexical verb does not contribute arguments in conflation structures, a conclusion motivated empirically. I present a theory of syntax-semantics mapping which relies on VP shells with meaningful light verbs which constrain the interpretations of their specifiers and complements. Conflation is treated as compounding of a verb root to one of the light verbs. This accounts simply for the argument-structural patterns of resultatives and event path structures. None of the argumentation appeals to operations at a lexical-semantic level between conceptual structure and syntax. 1