sentence can't be grammatical. This indicates that in (7a) se stessi must have a proper antecedent in the sentence—the pro that takes the theme role. Cognate object Cognate objects are nominal complements of their cognate verbs that are normally intransitive. For example, (8) John died a gruesome death. Such a structure posed a problem for theta-criterion because normally the verb assigns only one theta-role, theme, which is already taken by the DP, "John." The sentence should be thus predicted ill-formed. To explain the phenomenon, one way is to re-categorize such a verb as "die" so as to change the way it assigns theta-roles. For that purpose, (8) can be interpreted as follows: (9) John met a gruesome death. Or John underwent a gruesome death. If the verb "die" is essentially similar to the operation-verb "meet," the cognate objects should be assigned a theta-role—one restricted to the nominal form of the verb head . In other words, "die" is now classified as a potentially transitive verb, assigning two theta-roles, agent to "John" and theme to "a gruesome death." Such a possibility is falsified, however, because cognate object constructions cannot be passivized . (10) a. A gruesome death was met by John. b. *A gruesome death was died by John. As we can no longer consider verbs that take cognate objects the same as potentially transitive verbs, argues, based on the framework of , that cognate objects are adjuncts rather than arguments, having the same meaning and structure as the manner adverbs in (12b). Such an analysis restores cognate objects to the group of arguments satisfying the theta-criterion, as adjuncts, by definition, are not counted as arguments and therefore need not be restricted by theta criterion. The tree form (11c) shows the adjunct DP in its relative position. Deverbal nouns Deverbal nouns are derived from verbs and thus assign theta-roles as their verb stems do. For example, (12) (i) the barbarians' destruction of Rome (ii) Rome's destruction (by the barbarians) (iii) the destruction of Rome (by the barbarians) (iv) *the barbarian's destruction () According to , the constructions in (12) are analogous to "the barbarians destroyed Rome" and destruction needs to assign theta-roles in line with theta-criterion. It assigns "agent" to the barbarians and "theme" to Rome so (i) is fine. The verb "destroy" alone doesn't obligatorily assign theta-role to its subject so (ii) and (iii) is well-formed, too. However, "destroy" must