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Proceedings of the 25th West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics edited by Donald Baumer, David Montero, and Michael Scanlon ISBN 1-57473-415-6 library binding vii+461 pages publication date: 2006 published by Cascadilla Proceedings Project, Somerville, MA, USA Table of contents Abstract Artemis Alexiadou and Florian Schäfer Instrument Subjects Are Agents or Causers 40-48 (complete pdf) This paper focuses on instrument subjects. It shows that instruments are acceptable as subjects crosslinguistically under two interpretations, that of an Agent and that of a Causer. In doing this, the general point is that the distinction between the two theta roles Agent and Causer is syntactically reflected. The closer look at instrument subjects provides us also with hints as to what it means to be an Agent or a Causer. |