The Unaccusative-Unergative Dichotomy of Predicates. Is There an Unaccusative Mismatch in English?

Anna Dabrowska

doi:10.22158/eltls.v1n1p61

Abstract

The paper addresses the issue of the unaccusative-unergative dichotomy of predicates, providing a special analysis of the class status of the verb “to die” in English. First, the article opens with a view of unaccusativity in the light of the Lexicon-Syntax Interface. Further, the verb “to die” is tested against the six syntactic unaccusativity diagnostics valid for English. The results obtain reveal the fact that the first three diagnostics (auxiliary selection, causative alternation and resultative constructions) do not work for the verb “to die”, while the last three diagnostics (adjectival participle, there-insertion, locative inversion) appear to have been satisfied. This would lead us to a conclusion that the verb “to die” should be considered as a real example of an Unaccusative Mismatch (Levin, 1986).

Highlights

Unaccusativity proves to be of a great significance within the debate upon the dual nature of verbs, their syntactic and lexical semantic characteristics, and the mutual relationship between these two features (Levin & Rappaport Hovav, 1995, p. 2). Perlmutter’s (1978) original hypothesis recognises unaccusativity as both syntactically encoded and semantically foreseeable
The failure to satisfy all or at least most diagnostic tests offered in the literature has led us to the conclusion that the English verb “to die” cannot be classed as unaccusative, neither can it be associated with the status of an unergative verb
Among the un—accusative diagnostics postulated for English, the resultative construction qualifies as a diagnostic of deep unaccusativity, since the D-Structure sta—tus of the argument of an intransitive verb determines whether or not that verb will be accepted in this construction

Summary

Introduction

Unaccusativity proves to be of a great significance within the debate upon the dual nature of verbs, their syntactic and lexical semantic characteristics, and the mutual relationship between these two features (Levin & Rappaport Hovav, 1995, p. 2). Perlmutter’s (1978) original hypothesis recognises unaccusativity as both syntactically encoded and semantically foreseeable. Unaccusativity proves to be of a great significance within the debate upon the dual nature of verbs, their syntactic and lexical semantic characteristics, and the mutual relationship between these two features Some verbs predicted to be unaccusative or unergative on the basis of semantic or syntactic diagnostics, do not meet the expectations. To solve this problem the verb will be tested against the unaccusativity diagnostics postulated in the literature for English since Burzio (1986), and adopted by Levin and Rappaport Hovav (1995) and Alexiadou et al (2004), among others.

Unaccusativity in the Light of the Lexicon-Syntax Interface

The Case of Unaccusative Mismatches in English

Conclusion