6.2.2. The Intransitive Motion Construction

To account for intransitive sentences expressing motion, Goldberg postulates the existence of an intransitive motion construction. This construction deals with sentences such as:

(6.130) The bottle floated into the cave.

Goldberg simply mentions this construction without analyzing it in any detail. She simply states that the intransitive motion construction is related to the caused-motion construction via a subpart inheritance link. This implies that it is a subpart of the caused motion construction. Structurally, it can be defined as [SUBJ [V OBL]], and semantically the subject, the object that moves, is a theme argument and the oblique is a directional. It is, therefore, exactly like the caused motion construction, except that the external cause of the movement is not present.