sell · vendere

Hierarchy

Same inventory as English sell. Not five-place. Not four sisters of one V. Surface count can name Pat, Chris, a lawnmower, and a price, but the lexicon does not list four co-arguments of √SELL / √VEND-.

$20 = venti dollari = one MeasureP. Orthography is not extra arity. There is no sixth argument “currency symbol.” See English sell · Hierarchy for the shared arithmetic.

What Group B changes is Case, clitics, and which letter does two jobs. What it does not change is the inventory. Twenty is still not dollars. Dollars is still not a sister of vendere. Payment-settled is still implicated, not e2. HAVE of the goods is still e2.

Italian frames · Case clothes

No English DOC / to-frame ACC flip. Theme stays ACC. Recipient is DAT (gli doubling a-PP). Price stays inside per. Cheapness under Neg therefore tracks the goods, not an applied ACC Recipient. There is no Chris was sold a lawnmower twin. Participle agreement tracks ACC Theme, not Price.

1. ✓ Pat ha venduto un tosaerba a Chris.
2. ✓ Pat ha venduto un tosaerba a Chris per venti dollari.
3. ✓ Pat ha venduto un tosaerba per venti dollari. Recipient omitted; per-PP may reread as Theme₂ of exchange — still one MeasureP
4. ✓ Pat ha venduto un tosaerba. Recipient and Price independently omissible
5. ✓ Non ha venduto Pat un tosaerba a Chris per venti dollari? canonical NegQ
6. ✓ Non gli ha venduto un tosaerba per venti dollari? gli = Recipient
7. ✓ Non gliene ha venduto uno per venti dollari? ne = quantified Theme QP
8. ✓ Il tosaerba non gli è stato venduto per venti dollari? passive promotes Theme; agreement tracks ACC
9. * Chris non è stato venduto un tosaerba per venti dollari? no DOC-passive twin
10. * Non gli ha venduto venti dollari un tosaerba? DAT / ACC cannot absorb Price as object

A bare No on the canonical NegQ most readily challenges the event or the goods. Challenging the twenty wants the Price QP already under discussion. That is the opposite of pagare, where the money is ACC and is cheap.

MeasureP WH diagnostics

WH forces Amount ≠ Denomination inside one Case object of per. Verbal WH sees the MeasureP, not unit and degree as two objects of vendere. Same MeasureP pattern as English sell, Spanish vender, French vendre, and deduct. LBC survives Neg. ne resumes one QP (goods); it does not resume dollari minus venti.

1. ✓ Per quanti dollari non gli ha venduto il tosaerba?
2. ✓ Per venti di che non gli ha venduto il tosaerba?
3. ✓ In che valuta non gli ha venduto il tosaerba per venti?
4. ✓ Non gliene ha venduti due per venti dollari? ne = goods QP
5. * Per che venti non gli ha venduto il tosaerba? LBC / sortal mismatch (Price remnant)
6. * Quanti non gli ha venduto il tosaerba dollari? stranded unit after vendere
7. * Non gliene ha venduto il tosaerba per venti? ne ≠ Price unit
8. * Ne ha venduto il tosaerba per venti. ne cannot resume dollars minus venti

Two constraints conspire on the stars: Left Branch Condition (Amount inside MeasureP; Italian cannot extract the degree and leave the unit stranded under per), and sortal mismatch under bare che (che wants an N or whole DP; venti is a numeral, not a denomination). Per quanti dollari pied-pipes. Rescues are per venti di che and in che valuta — the Group B spelling of English twenty of what / in what currency. The rescue does not make dollari a sister of venduto.

Geometry · vendere ≠ scambiare ≠ pagare

In Pat ha venduto un tosaerba a Chris, Chris comes to HAVE the lawnmower. That is give-geometry. DAT Recipient is the spell-out of low Appl_HAVE — the HAVE diagnostic that SWAP lacks.

• ≠ scambiare / swap. Chris is Recipient HAVE-goods, not Theme₂. scambiare inverts two Themes under Neg; vendere does not invert goods and money. *Non gli ha venduto 8.400 USDT a Kim per 0,2 BTC? is only good if the goods really are the USDT.
• ≠ pagare / pay_GIVE. Cloth mismatch under one operator: Non ha pagato Pat venti dollari a Chris per un tosaerba? questions ACC money; Per quanti dollari non gli ha venduto il tosaerba? questions a Price PP. Shared per on the leftover DP is packaging. The clitic and participle give the heads away: lo / venduto track the mower on vendere; the money is ACC on pagare.
• Payment-true is implicated, not entailed — the missing default of vendere. Goods-HAVE is e2 of vendere and the missing default of pagare.

When Recipient is dropped (Pat ha venduto un tosaerba per venti dollari), the per-PP can be reread as incoming Incremental Theme of an exchange. That rereading changes the Appl head (HAVE vs SWAP); it does not split venti from dollari or add a verbal sister for the unit.

Shells, ApplP, and Case

VoiceP  [ Pat
  vP / initP
    ApplP_LOW  [ ChrisDAT   [ Appl_HAVE
      VP  [ √VEND-   [ Theme  un tosaerbaACC ] ] ] ]
    PP_per  [ per  [ MeasureP  [ Amount venti ] [ N dollari ] ] ] ]

Italian vendere never assigns four structural Cases. Theme is ACC; Recipient is DAT; Price is inside P. The English DOC applied-object slot has no twin — that is why *Chris non è stato venduto un tosaerba? stays bad and why cheapness under Neg tracks the goods.

Amount is not an Incremental Theme of sell on the give-reading. The lawnmower is. Twenty dollars can measure the sale as a scale without being the object that is incrementally transferred. On a SWAP rereading, the MeasureP becomes the incoming Incremental Theme — still one Theme, still internally Amount + Unit.

Optional high Appl DAT (ethical / affectee) is a different dative from Recipient. Volume 5 splits three datives: Recipient of e_HAVE, high Affectee of the event, FI causee of outer CAUSE. NegQ does not turn the Affectee into a fourth argument of √VEND-. Type A fare climbing unions Voice domains; gli under fare vendere is Causee or Recipient until a Chris is written; Price stays outside the DAT cluster and never climbs as a dative. Purpose per + INF never climbs either.

Omission does not demote Price to a pure adjunct. High and 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 (Italian)

1. * Chris non è stato venduto un tosaerba? no DOC-passive twin
2. * Non gli ha venduto venti dollari un tosaerba? Price ≠ DAT / ACC object
3. * Per che venti non gli ha venduto il tosaerba? Amount ≠ denomination N under per
4. * Quanti non gli ha venduto il tosaerba dollari? LBC stranded unit
5. * Ne ha venduto il tosaerba per venti. ne ≠ Price unit remnant
6. * Non gli ha venduto 8.400 USDT a Kim per 0,2 BTC? no SWAP inversion (unless goods really are USDT)
7. * Non ci ha venduto il tosaerba venti dollari? ci ≠ Price

Group B packaging · this tick Italian only

Group B (Spanish, French, Italian) is the Romance Case-cloth contrast set already used for NegQ on sell. Same hierarchy as English; different host of Amount+Denomination and cloth of Recipient (DAT / a-PP, not DOC ACC). Italian’s distinctive Group B fact vs Spanish: per overloads Price and Purpose; Spanish splits them as por / para. French does the same overload with pour. This tick is Italian only. Spanish Group B is at sell-es.html; French at sell-fr.html; Group A Japanese at sell-ja.html; Mandarin at sell-zh.html; Navajo stays deferred.

Open items

• Navajo micro-entry. Group A HANDLE scout; stem vs next-word WH. Deferred — do not invent depth this tick.
• Dual-denomination prices (per 8.400 USDT with goods 0,2 BTC). Still one MeasureP with a pair-name unit (LP-token moral), not two Themes / a sixth slot. Same open as English / Spanish / French.
• Ethical DAT vs Recipient under gli. Ambiguity is the Group B risk once FI fare vendere wraps; Volume 5 already splits three datives. Needs controlled elicitation, not invented judgments.
• Sell versus costare / charge_FEE. Circumstance subjects and fee geometry need their own grid; do not reuse this frame. Weather still cannot sell. si demotes Voice; it does not promote Price or Recipient to subject of a DOC twin.
• Group A tightness / Navajo. Japanese at sell-ja.html; Mandarin at sell-zh.html; NV scout / predicted, not elicited here.

Corpus filenames

Primary extract for this micro-entry is Group B Romance NegQ on sell (§3.3 Italian frames, §6 LBC, §7 per overload with French, §11 fare DAT split). Geometry is shared with the English lexical entry and the Spanish / French micro-entries. Chat packaging summary: Tritransitive NegQ Turn 3. Text extract used this tick under /tmp/sell-it-extracts/.