Q: About obj OBJ(theta)

[Joan Bresnan]

Hi, I'm sorry that your msg comes in the midst of a heavy quarter when
I don't have time to run down all of the bibliographic references.
However, one important discussion of object-theta is Lori Levin's
dissertation (see lfg biblio: title is OPERATIONS ON LEXICAL FORMS).
A typological discussion of using primary and secondary 
(restricted) objects rather than only the indirect/direct object
typology is Matthew Dryer's 1986 paper "Primary Objects, Secondary
Objects, and Anti-Dative", Language 62--Not a
lfg-specific paper, but a good typological/foundational piece.  There
is also much discussion of this topic in Bantu; see the lfg chapters
in Mchombo's THEORETICAL ASPECTS OF BANTU GRAMMAR, CSLI Publications,
1993, the references cited there, and a 1994 Indiana U dissertation by
Mayrene Bentley, THE SYNTACTIC EFFECTS OF ANIMACY IN BANTU LANGUAGES.
Most work on restricted objects is based on analyses of specific
languages (for example, Chu-Ren Huang on Chinese datives).
Some recent work has challenged having the distinction in f-structure,
recapturing it in a-structure (Alsina's 1993 Stanford dissertation PREDICATE
COMPOSITION: A THEORY OF SYNTACTIC FUNCTION ALTERNATIONS).

Some good introductory LMT references are mentioned below.
 
Sorry I can't be more specific right now.  The intuition is that not
all objects are equal.  Some have greater access to properties like
passivization, adjacency to the verb, verb agreement, unspecified
object deletion, valence-reducing reflexing/reciprocal binding, etc.
The other(s) are the object-thetas.

introductory lmt:

Bresnan 1990. Monotonicity and the Theory of Relation Changes in LFG.
Language Research 26.4, 637--42.

Bresnan and Zaenen. 1990.  Deep Unaccusativity in LFG.  In Dziwirek et
al., eds., Grammatical Relations: A Cross-Theoretical Perspective,
CSLI Publications.

Zaenen and Engdahl. 1994. Descriptive and Theoretical Syntax in the
Lexicon.  Atkins and Zampolli, eds., Computational Approaches to the
Lexicon.  Clarendon Press, Oxford.  pp. 181--211.

Alsina. 1992.  On the Argument Structure of Causatives.  LI
23.517-555.

Alsina and Joshi 1991.  Parameters in Cuastive Constructions.  CLS
27.1--15.

Sells, Zaenen, and Zec. 1987. Reflexivization Variation: ...
In Iida, Wechsler, and Zec, eds., Lecture Notes (Working Papers in
Grammatical Theory and Discoruse Structure), CSLI Publications.

Not all of these deal directly with object-theta, but they show how
things fit together.

Joan Bresnan