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To answer Problem 2, I have plotted the verbs kill and have. I believe that in looking at the relevant properties in the above chart, we can determine that one is a stable verb and the other is unstable. In the case of kill, we see a clear concentration of proto-agent and proto-theme properties for the following example: “Claire(Su) killed Andrew(DO).” The verb is stable not just because of the cluster of properties indicated, but because in every situation it is clear that Claire is the agent of Andrew’s demise. She is the cause. Even if the statement became passive (“Andrew(Su) was killed by Claire(IO)”), she is still the cause and he is still the theme. I believe that Andrew even fits the “comes into being” property because the larger meaning of that property is a change of state—something, by way of the predicate, is being altered. In this case it is Andrew’s classification of being alive that is changed. In no situation could it be that his state isn’t changed (“Claire killed Andrew, but Andrew didn’t die”), or that his state didn’t change but hers did. And we can’t say, “Claire killed Andrew,” but mean that Andrew killed Claire. The consistency of Claire’s status of being the agent means this is a stable verb. In contrast, have (or has) is not stable. For example someone might say, “Anne has red hair.” Unlike in the first case, where at first glance we intuitively know that Claire was the agent(killer) and Andrew was the theme(victim), in this case there is no clear agent or theme. Anne is the subject and her red hair is the direct object, but their syntactic roles don't connect to any semantic roles. Anne isn't volitional, she's not committing an act that has any effect on her hair, and she didn't do anything to cause her state of red hair. Her red hair is not changed by her action, is not being acted upon, and serves only to indicate a characteristic. The fact that 'has' (in this context) is a stative predicate also has an impact. Often stative predicates tend to be unstable verbs and leave indications of agent and/or theme unclear. In this case the proto-agent properties and intuition are consistent with that trend. I think one of the underlying points in Dowty's view of semantic and syntactic connections is that when verbs are stable and the agent and theme are clearly indicated, the semantic roles of each line up with the syntactic counterparts of an active sentence(Su to agent and DO to theme). In this case since neither seem to fit, I believe has is an unstable verb.

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