Valence Creation and the German Applicative: the Inherent Semantics o f Linking Patterns LAURA A. MICHAELIS University o f Colorado at Boulder JOSEF RUPPENHOFER University of California, Berkeley Abstract W e provide a unified account of semantic effects observable in attested examples of the German applicative (‘be-’) construction, e.g. Rollstuhlfahrer Poul Sehachsen aus Kopenhagen will den 1997 erschienenen Wegweiser Handiguide Europa fortführen und zusammen mit Movado Berlin berollen (‘Wheelchair user Poul Schacksen from Copenhagen wants to continue the guide ‘Handiguide Europe’, which came out in 1997, and roll Berlin together with Movado.’). We argue that these effects do not come from lexico-semantic operations on ‘input’ verbs, but are instead the products of a reconciliation procedure in which the meaning of the verb is integrated into the event-structure schema denoted by the applicative construction. We analyze the applicative pattern as an argument - structure construction , in terms of Goldberg (1995). We contrast this approach with that of Brinkmann (1997), in which properties associated with the applicative pattern (e.g. omissibility of the theme argument, holistic interpretation of the goal argument, and planar construal of the location argument) are attributed to general semantico-pragmatic principles. W e undermine the generality of the principles as stated, and assert that these properties are instead construction-particular. W e further argue that the constructional account provides an elegant model of the valence-creation and valence-augmentation functions of the prefix. We describe the constructional semantics as prototype-based: diverse implications of fee-predications, including iteration, transfer, affectedness, intensity and saturation, derive via regular patterns of semantic extension from the topological concept o f coverage . i INTRODUCTION Compositional theories of sentence semantics have been centrally con- cerned with the relationship between the meanings of lexical items and the meanings o f sentences that contain those lexical items. Verbal argument structure has been of great interest in recent theory building because o f the transparent nature of the relationship between the verb’s semantic require- ments and the number and kind of thematic roles in the sentence. The majority of theories of verbal argument structure accord a central place to the concept of alternation , exploring the nature of the relationship between argument frames licensed by a given verb. The recognition that Published in: Journal of Semantics, Vol. 17(2000) no. 4 pp. 335-395