Revisiting the grammatical function "οbject" (OBJ and OBJθ )

Free subject verb multiword expressions (MWEs) of Modern Greek and English pro-
vide data that challenge the theoretical status of the syntactic notion object. We
compare the syntactic reflexes of three types of verbal complement: objects of typi-
cal monotransitive verbs, indirect objects of ditransitive verbs and fixed accusative
noun phrases (NPs) that occur as direct complements of verbs in MWEs. Passivi-
sation, clitic replacement, object optionality and distribution present themselves
as syntactic reflexes that draw relatively clear cut lines across these three classes
of verbal complements and suggest that the Grammatical Functions OBJ(ect) and
OBJ(ect)θ of LFG should not be assigned to the fixed accusative NPs that occur in
verb MWEs; rather a new Grammatical Function should be defined for this pur-
pose.