Determinants of event type in Persian complex predicates

In this paper we analyse the interdependence of Persian nonverbal (NV) elements and the light verb (LV) in determining the syntactic properties, the event structure, and the alternation possibilities of the entire complex predicate (CP). We argue that these properties provide strong evidence for a constructionalist approach to such phenomena, like that of Hale and Keyser (1993, 2002), and that the combination of compositionality and syntactic independence effects observed in these constructions, are difficult, if not impossible, to deal with in a projectionist approach.