Abstract
This paper develops a lexical semantic analysis of English complex predicates with the prefix over- such as overeat, and claims that these complex predicates are formed in the same way as the resultative construction at the level of Lexical Conceptual Structure. In other words, in this paper, over- is regarded as a resultative predicate. The aim of this paper is to argue about the inheritance of argument structures of these complex predicates from their base verbs. It is also proposed that the difference between over- +V in English and Japanese compound verbs in their processes of formation can be reduced to the difference between the two languages in a boundedness parameter (Kageyama (2001, 2002)).
