DISCOURSE PATIENT PARADOXES

This article has two objectives: (i) to show paradoxes about the so-called "discourse patient," and (ii) to propose an analysis that resolves them. The discourse patient is a sentential element whose referent is construed as being affected in some discourse, and which is not licensed by the verb. The present study points out that it behaves puzzlingly in three respects, which raises paradoxes at the levels of (a) language-internal consistency, (b) cross-linguistic variation, and (c) putative universal uniformity. This paper illustrates these paradoxes with resultatives and passives in English and Japanese, and argues for an analysis that resolves them all. The main claim is that they are resolved by combining five general principles (ones governing (I) the orientedness of event construal, (II) hierarchical conceptualization, (III) isomorphic form-meaning linking, (IV) the typology of passives, and (V) grammatical extensions), together with two language-particular specifications (ones about (A) the available types of passives and (B) the prominent modes of construal in the respective grammars), which are all motivated independently.