Theme vowels, iterativity and verb classes: A DM analysis

Abstract

This paper is concerned with the relation between theme vowels, mainly -a, iterativity and verb class properties of Czech predicates. It investigates three phenomena – participial adjectives, motion verbs and impersonal constructions – and there, two puzzles: unaccusative participial adjectives with the “transitive” -n/t suffix and unaccusative impersonal constructions. The three phenomena share some properties: they have iterative (or more generally, plural) interpretation; display specific changes in argument structure behavior and crucially, they contain the verbal theme -a. The article addresses the question of what role the theme -a has in derivations of these phenomena. It argues that the theme -a is a marker with several functions; among other things, it realizes the iterative head.