On the Argument Structure of Certain Haitian Predicates - Rete, To Remain', Posib 'Possible'

The paper presents a systematic description of rete and posib, including some patterns which have not been discussed before in the literature. The account confirms that these predicates do not provide examples of subject-to-subject raising constructions. A lexical subject with rete or posib is always assigned a theta-role by that predicate. The analysis provides a unified lexical representation of each predicate without resort to double lexical entries to represent different syntactic patterns which are phonolog-ically and semantically identical. The syntactic properties of these predicates are essentially parallel, with the basic exception of the distinction that rete is a Case assigner, but posib is not. Additionally, it is argued that rete requires an overt specification of the location or time of the event which it describes, but posib has no such requirement.