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Dutch morphologically complex caritive adjectives ending in loos '-less' present three explananda. [i] Where there is a choice between a variant including a linking morph ('lm') to the immediate left of loos and one lacking a lm, this choice is usually not random: in alternating pairs, the lm-less forms tend to have a literal interpretation while the forms with a lm frequently show a certain degree of semantic specialisation. [ii] Nominalisation of loos forms with heid '-ness, -hood' can shift main stress to loos, particularly when a lm precedes loos. [iii] For loos+heid forms with variable stress, stress on loos can give rise to an interpretation pertaining to events/situations rather than to individuals. This paper accounts for all three properties, built upon an analysis of the morphosyntax of caritive loos according to which the presence of a lm requires a syntactic derivation involving a complex predication structure while the structure of loos forms without lm is ambiguous in principle between a syntactically complex one and an alternative involving compounding. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The principal objective of this article is to establish a direct relationship between the structural height of the base position of the applied argument and the case and promotion-to-subject patterns observed in applicative constructions, with particular reference to applicatives of unaccusatives. The article achieves this through an approach exploiting dependent case, with the domains relevant for dependent case assignment being identified as phases, defined as (a) complete predicate-argument structures and (b) propositions. By making argument structure a defining ingredient of the delineation of phases, the article distills precise and accurate predictions about the interaction between the base-generation site of the applied object and the case patterns of unaccusative constructions featuring such an object, improving on the efficacy of previous accounts. In the process, the article reexamines the syntactic status of constituents located on the edge of a phase. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]