Japanese verb-verb compounds formed from two independent verbs raise the interesting question of how the interpretation and argument structure of the complex verb can be systematically derived from the two constituent verbs. The starting point of this study is the observation that causally interpreted compounds like tumi-agaru (stack-rise) 'to stack up high' and compounds like sagasi-mawaru (search-around) 'to search around,' which do not exhibit a causal relationship between the constituent verbs, show clear asymmetries in their argument structure patterns. Based on this observation, an innovative analysis is developed that directly connects argument and event structure. The theoretical framework used is lexical decomposition grammar, which allows for this connection through the interaction of partially violated elements.