Resultatives and Constraints on Concealed Causatives

A well-formed transitive resultative construction must show a relation of direct causation between its causing and caused subevents; that is, resultatives conform to the same well-formedness condition as lexical causatives. Yet the best formulation of this condition is the subject of continued discussion. This paper revisits this question in the context of transitive resultatives. They are ideal for this investigation as their verbs provide explicit information about the causing subevent, while lexical causatives are silent about this subevent. This paper investigates the relation between the causing and caused subevents through case studies of resultatives with the result phrases dry and awake. The case studies probe the complex interplay between the subject, the verb, the postverbal NP, and the result phrase using naturally occurring examples. The last case study investigates why resultatives with certain verb–AP combinations disallow a particular interpretation. Together these case studies support the prototypical understanding of direct causation in the literature.