This book examines various linguistic phenomena and determines that certain constructions should be treated as complex predicates. Specifically, the book explores auxiliary and verb combinations in future, perfect, and passive constructions; causative constructions; verb complex constructions with raising and control verbs; subject and object predicatives; depictive secondary predicates; resultative constructions; and particle and verb combinations. The properties of all these constructions are studied on a broad empirical basis, mainly with data from German.
Using scrambling and fronting data, the author argues that all these constructions -- except the depictive secondary predicates, which are analyzed as adjuncts -- should be treated as complex predicates. The book explores the potential for a verb to enter a resultative construction or to form a particle verb that follows a productive pattern is licensed by lexical rules.
Previous research regarding how particle verbs must be treated in the morphology component are discussed and refuted. An analysis of inflection and derivation is provided that is compatible with the syntactic analysis of particle verbs. As a byproduct, this analysis solves the bracketing paradox with regard to particle verbs often discussed in the literature.
