On the “scare reading” of resultatives

This paper proposes that for single-clause resultatives in a language to allow the scare reading, two conditions must be met, namely that the resultative must be realized as a compound and that the compound must be headless. On this proposal, non-compound resultatives in English, French, German, Japanese, Korean, Romanian and Swedish cannot have the scare reading because they do not meet the first condition. Moreover, Japanese and Swedish RVCs do not allow this reading because they do not meet the second condition. Finally, as Igbo and Mandarin RVCs meet both conditions, they can have the scare reading. In addition, the paper offers a formal analysis of the scare reading which stresses the interaction of the individual thematic relation expressed by each component of an RVC and the composite thematic relation expressed by the whole compound.