Oggetti interni e reaction objects come nomi predicativi di costrutti a verbo supporto

Abstract

Analyses regarding clauses with a cognate object (CO), e.g. Alice laughed a scornful laugh, have frequently been based on the query: is the CO an adjunct or a complement? This paper aims to contribute to the debate with an alternative suggestion: the CO functions as a noun predicate licensing the subject, to which it assigns a semantic role, whilst the verb functions as a support (a ‘light verb’). A number of the well-known properties of COs, e.g. certain constraints on the determiner, appear to corroborate this analysis. Clauses with the so-called reaction object (RO), e.g. Alice coughed a scornful laugh, are analyzed as multi-predicative as well: also the RO is a noun predicate which licenses the subject and assigns it a semantic role. Nevertheless, the verbs behave differently: whereas in the case of COs it is irrelevant whether the verb licenses the subject and assigns it a semantic role, inasmuch as such a role would be identical to that assigned by the CO, in the RO construction the verb does re-license the subject and assigns it an additional semantic role.