Unaccusativity and the syntax of imperatives in East Circassian

Ksenia Ershova

doi:10.3765/plsa.v2i0.4091

Abstract

This paper presents novel evidence for the syntactic distinction between unergative and unaccusative verbs in East Circassian (or Kabardian. The evidence concerns a particular strategy of forming imperatives -- simultaneous causativization and reflexivization -- which is only applicable to unaccusative predicates. I argue that this type of imperative involves the promotion of the internal argument to the a higher position through the use of the causative morpheme which has been grammaticalized to mark imperative mood. The observed patterns suggest that imperative mood, while generally associated with the CP-layer, must be sensitive to the structure of vP.

Highlights

This paper addresses the syntactic distinction between unergative and unaccusative verbs in East Circassian, a language that has not been previously observed to draw such a divide
I argue that the limitation of this form to unaccusative verbs is due to the selectional properties of the imperative head involved: (i) it selects VP as its complement and licenses an external argument specifier via ergative case assignment, but (ii) it does not introduce a new θ-role
The sensitivity of an imperative mood head to the internal structure of VP in East Circassian calls for locality between the imperative head and VP, challenging the longstanding assumption that imperative force is introduced in the periphery of CP

Summary

Introduction

This paper addresses the syntactic distinction between unergative and unaccusative verbs in East Circassian, a language that has not been previously observed to draw such a divide. In addition to the unmarked imperative form described above, for a number of intransitive verbs the imperative mood may be expressed via the use of the causative morpheme Ke- In this case the second person subject is promoted to the position of the ergative causer, while the causee is expressed as the absolutive direct object that is coindexed with the causer and marked with the reflexive morpheme z@- (6b). Besides the addition of the causative and reflexive morphology, the morphosyntactic properties of this form are identical to the unmarked imperative: the same prefixal negation m@- is used (6b), and second person singular subject agreement is dropped in non-negated forms (7b) This strategy is not available for all intransitive predicates. The reflexive causative imperative is only possible for unaccusative verbs, i.e. verbs which take a sole internal argument

DP v

Conclusion