One eventuality per subevent: an event-based account of argument structure

It has been argued that there are two types of event structure, a simple event structure and a complex event structure. The assumption that a single clause may have a complex event structure is known as subeventual analysis. This paper argues that a subevent in a complex event structure may be associated with any eventuality, including an action by an agent, a change of state or a change of location, provided that general event structural requirements are satisfied. I term this version of the subeventual analysis the free subeventual analysis. The analysis is shown to be preferable theoretically as well as empirically to the analysis presented in the literature. The proposed analysis clarifies event structure and its effect on the co-occurrence restriction on a change of state expression and a change of location expression in a single clause.