Abstract
The argument relations that hold in verbal compounds of the form N+ Ving such as bike-riding and pot smoking are analyzed in government theory with a view to exploring possible ways of semantic interpretation in the lexicon. The impossibility of subject-linking (e.g. rainfalling), observed by Roeper & Siegel 1978, Selkirk 1982, Lieber 1983 and others, is shown to follow automatically from the government relation in the configurational structure of Present-day English. The proposed analysis receives empirical justification from nonconfigurational languages such as Old English and Japanese, in which examples of subject-linking are amply attested.
