SynSem: Shim and Epstein on "Unification of Theta Relations"

Two Notes on Possible Approaches to the Unification of Theta Relations

SynSem will feature a presentation by Jae-Young Shim and Sam Epstein. The title and abstract of their presentation are given below.

Two Notes on Possible Approaches to the Unification of Theta Relations

At least as early as Chomsky (1981) an interesting problem was revealed and placed on the  research agenda, that is, the problem of a non-unified theory of theta relations. This problem  persists in current minimalist analyses under which theta role to subject is assigned in Spec-Head  relation, while theta role to object is assigned in Head-Complement relation. The purpose of this  paper is to explore possible unifications of theta marking. Assuming that the only theta-marking  configuration is Head-Complement, we present two different unified solutions to the asymmetry,  one representational and the other derivational.