초록 열기/닫기 버튼
This paper aims to present a syntactic and semantic analysis of the English permissive verb let, as in She let them play. Drawing on standard and novel arguments and evidence, it is argued that the verb is grammatically a kind of causative though semantically a permissive. We show that this causative is even structurally much closer to causative make than to causative have. For the syntactic analysis, we employ the functional category ‘Voice Phrase(VoiceP)’. For the semantic analysis, the two semantic features, [±direct] in matrix constructions and [±volition] in complement constructions, are adopted. For causative let, [-direct] and [+volition] are suggested. The matrix construction cannot be passivized because of one of these features and its value, such as [-direct].
