blame · culpar

Hierarchy

Same inventory as English blame. Not five-place. Not four sisters of one V. Surface count can name the committee, the weather, the delay, and an airline — but the lexicon does not list four co-arguments of √ASCRIBE_FAULT / √CULP-.

No MeasureP. There is no verbal Amount+Denomination object. Degrees that sneak in (cuánta culpa, partitives on Charge) live on the Abney spine of a light noun or of Charge — Left Branch Condition for sell / pay / charge_FEE does not apply as a verbal diagnostic here.

What Group B changes is Case, clitics, and light-noun packaging. What it does not change is the inventory. Weather still satisfies Target and fails Judge. Cause-true is still not entailed. Target and Charge still do not invert at Transfer cost.

Spanish frames · Case clothes

Romance packages blame without a productive DOC. Target is a-marked or a direct object. Charge is de. Clitics and se demotion are height diagnostics — as in the Transfer Romance supplement — but the class contrast remains: Transfer Themes invert under Neg; blame Target and Charge do not.

1. ✓ El comité culpó al clima del retraso. canonical · a-Target · de-Charge
2. ✓ ¿No culparon al clima del retraso? polar NegQ baseline (§9.1)
3. ✓ ¿No echaron la culpa al clima? light noun · on-geometry
4. ✓ Atribuir la culpa a Target Assign_Blame Group B light-noun twin
5. ✓ ¿No lo culparon del retraso? lo = Target (clima)
6. ✓ ¿No se la echaron al clima? la = culpa (light noun)
7. ✓ ¿No se culpó al clima del retraso? se demotion · impersonal / Voice
8. ✓ ¿No hicieron culpar al comité del retraso? faire wrap · outer CAUSE_G
9. ?? ¿No culparon del retraso al clima? marked invert · focus shift, not free Transfer invert
10. ?? ¿No le culparon el retraso al clima? non-productive DOC-looking · marked
11. * ¿No lo culpó el clima a la aerolínea? weather as Judge
12. * ¿No hicieron culpar al clima a la aerolínea? weather still not inner Judge under faire

A bare No on the canonical NegQ most readily challenges the ascription event or the ACC Target. Challenging the Charge wants that content already under discussion. Negation does not grow a double-object and does not create a fourth Case.

WH / NegQ diagnostics · no MeasureP LBC

Unlike sell / pay_GIVE / charge_FEE / bet, blame has no verbal MeasureP. There is therefore no Left-Branch Condition of the Amount-from-Denomination type on √CULP-. Degrees that appear are DP-internal on Charge or on the light noun culpa.

1. ✓ ¿A quién no culparon del retraso? WH = Target
2. ✓ ¿De qué no culparon al clima? WH = Charge
3. ✓ ¿Quién no culpó al clima del retraso? WH = Judge
4. ✓ ¿Cuánta culpa no le echaron al clima? degree on light noun · Abney-side
5. * ¿Cuánto no culparon de retraso al clima? no verbal MeasureP LBC host
6. * ¿Quién no culpó el clima a la aerolínea? weather cannot be Judge under WH either

Superiority ranks Judge > Target > Charge. It does not rank Charge against a silent Purpose, Price, or Theme₂. Cheap NegQ association tracks the Case object of the chosen cloth: Target under single-verb culpar; light noun under echar la culpa.

Geometry · culpar ≠ atribuir_ATT ≠ credit_MERIT ≠ Transfer

In El comité culpó al clima del retraso, the committee holds that the weather is responsible for the delay. That is ascription, not HAVE of goods and not SWAP of Themes. Weather is Target. The delay is Charge. HOLD is an attitude; RESPONSIBLE(Target, Charge) is content, not a presupposed fact.

• ≠ English DOC / Transfer invert. There is no productive *culpar Target Charge DOC. Marked ¿No le culparon el retraso al clima? is flagged non-productive. Low invert ??¿No culparon del retraso al clima? is focus shift, not Transfer-level free Theme₁ ↔ Theme₂.
• ≠ attribute_ATT polarity merge. Shared family (ascribe content to Target) and shared Voice filter; blame writes FAULT polarity. Spanish atribuir can host light-noun FAULT (atribuir la culpa a) or other Charges — keep the Assign_Blame split: single-verb culpar a … de vs light-noun atribuir / echar la culpa a.
• ≠ credit_MERIT. Opposite polarity of merit. credit_MERIT has with-cloth options English blame lacks; Spanish packaging for merit is a later tick (queued: credit_MERIT · Japanese next). No ledger MeasureP here.
• ≠ charge_ACCUSE legal overlay. Fault content can overlap in discourse; legal / speech-act overlays of accuse are not filed on this page.
• Missing defaults. Cause-true and settlement are not entailed. ¿No culparon al clima del retraso? is compatible with the weather not in fact causing the delay.

English twin pointer only (not deepened this tick): Target for Charge / Charge on Target. Weather OK as Target, *not* as Judge. Spanish spells the for-frame as culpar a … de; the on-geometry surfaces as light-noun echar / atribuir la culpa a, not as a productive Charge-ACC flip of the English on-frame type.

Shells, ApplP, and Case

VoiceP  [ JudgeNOM
  vP / √ASCRIBE_FAULT
    ACC / a-marked    Target   (culpar-frame)
    PP_de             Charge   (de + NP / clause)
]

Light-noun on-geometry:
VoiceP  [ Judge
  vP / √ECHAR·ATRIBUIR
    ACC               la culpaN   (Charge-type / FAULT)
    PP_a              Target ]

Spanish culpar never assigns four structural Cases. Target is ACC / a-marked; Charge is inside de. No low Appl_HAVE. No low Appl_SWAP. No Appl_TASK. No MeasureP. High Appl / Affectee is extra when present and is not a listed argument of √ASCRIBE_FAULT.

Clitic height: lo resumes Target under single-verb culpar; la resumes the light noun under echar la culpa. Inanimate Target clitics are fine. Inanimate subject as Judge is not generated — that is the Voice filter, not a Case accident.

Outer CAUSE_G (hacer culpar) wraps Voice. The causee, not the weather, is the Judge. *¿No hicieron culpar al clima a la aerolínea? keeps the inner filter. Type A climbing unions Voice domains; Charge stays a Reason-PP and never climbs as a dative.

Omission does not demote Charge to a pure adjunct. Selected P-layers are optional in the numeration; they are still arguments when present. The diagnostic is participanthood under Case, binding, and WH — not omitability.

Underivables (Spanish)

1. * ¿No lo culpó el clima a la aerolínea? weather / inanimate as Judge
2. * ¿No hicieron culpar al clima a la aerolínea? faire wrap does not wash Voice filter
3. * ¿No culparon la aerolínea el retraso? no productive DOC
4. * ¿Cuánto no culparon de retraso al clima? no verbal MeasureP LBC
5. * ¿No culparon al clima para el retraso? para ≠ Charge letter (Purpose coercion)
6. * ¿No intercambiaron el clima por el retraso? SWAP cloth ≠ ascribe-fault
7. ?? ¿No culparon del retraso al clima? not Transfer-level free invert
8. ?? ¿No le culparon el retraso al clima? marked DOC-looking · non-productive

Group B packaging · this tick Spanish only

Group B (Spanish, French, Italian) is the Romance Case-cloth contrast set already used for NegQ on blame (§9). Same hierarchy as English; different host of Charge (de / pour / per / di) and light-noun on-geometry. Clitics resume Target; se/si demotion targets Voice. This tick is Spanish only. French blâmer / attribuer la faute and Italian incolpare / attribuire la colpa share the DOCX and may be briefly pointed; full sense×language pages for those languages are later queue ticks. Group C (HU Focus, PL GEN-neg, BG WH clusters) and Group A / D packaging stay predicted or scout — not elicited here.

Open items

• French / Italian micro-entries. Same Group B geometry; pour / per / di Charge letters and en / ne quantity resumption on measured Charge. Deferred — do not invent depth this tick.
• English twin deepening. blame.html remains a stub this tick. for/on clothes, MeasureP absence, and Voice filter are already sketched there; sprint-depth English is a later queue item if desired.
• atribuir without light noun. Index 2 pairs culpar, atribuir. Bare atribuir Charge a Target (no culpa) overlaps attribute_ATT / assign_ASCRIBE. Keep split; do not collapse on this page.
• Marked DOC-looking and invert. ¿No le culparon el retraso al clima? and ??¿No culparon del retraso al clima? need controlled elicitation for speaker-variable judgments — flagged, not closed.
• Group C / A packaging. Hungarian Focus+nem, Polish GEN-neg predictions, Japanese sei, Mandarin 把 remain scout / predicted. No fake elicitation.

Corpus filenames

Primary extract for this micro-entry is Group B Romance NegQ on blame (§9). Geometry is shared with the English lexical entry. Light-noun contrast from Assign_Blame_Comparison. Chat packaging: Tritransitive chats 13 (assign vs blame Case / NegQ) and 22 (blame in negative questions · no fourth theta).