Gradience in Subcategorization? Locative Phrases with Italian Verbs of Motion

The study of the argument vs. adjunct status of the locative phraseoptionally occurring with verbs of motion in Italian, both bounded (directedmotion) and unbounded (manner of motion), points to the notion of scalarchange as a useful model for the argument/adjunct distinction: locativeprepositional phrases referring to the scalar change component entailed by averb (either its endpoint(s) or its direction) have an argument status, otherwisethey are adjuncts. This finding has a distributional correlation in the differences inthe association strength (i.e., head-dependence) of locative prepositional phraseswith this class of verbs.