4. Getting into the nitty-gritty of non-overt arguments

04) 00Discuss the problems raised by the paired sentences below:02br
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00a) 00I have eaten a hot meal.02br
00I have eaten.02br
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00b) 00She is smoking cigars.02br
00She is smoking.02br
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00c) 00She is writing a letter to her friends.02br
00She is writing to her friends.02br
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00d) 00She is writing a novel.02br
00She is writing.02br
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00e) 00She drinks a lot of wine.02br
00She drinks.02br
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00 We can observe in these examples that some verbs allow an argument to be omitted. 02br
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00 When the argument is not represented overtly we still interpret the sentence as 02br
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00 referring to an activity involving two arguments. a) for examples says: I have eaten.02br
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00We interpret this one as “I have eaten something”. There is an extended meaning in the second sentences. The first ones are much more specific in meaning.02br
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00There is a relatively small class of verbs in English which allow the direct object to be omitted02br
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00Discuss the semantic effect of object omission in the sentences below:02br
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00f) 00She is expecting an important visitor.02br
00She is expecting.02br
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00g) 00The teachers kissed the students.02br
00The teachers kissed.02br
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00h) 00The children are washing their dolls.02br
00The children are washing.02br
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00i) 00John and Mary met Jane in the park.02br
00John and Mary met in the park.02br
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00Semantic restrictions on the implicit argument cannot be derived in any obvious way from the structure. The meaning is between both sentences is completely different than those given in a – e. Omissibility of an object is kind of arbitrary, it is not predictable. “Eat” for example allows for an understood object while “devour”, which is closely similar in meaning, does not. 02br
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00Louise is eating.02br
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00*Louise is devouring.02br
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00The same applies to desert and abandon.02br
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00Taken from the book: Non-overt subjects are not constrained by the lexical properties of the verbs whose arguments they are. A non-finite verb may have a non-overt subject. This is a productive rule.But implicit objects are constrained. 02br
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00A lexical rule allows the object of a certain number of transitive verbs in English to be implicit, while syntactic rules require implicit subjects for non-finite sentences.0-