Unaccusative Structure Research Articles

Involvee causatives in Turkish

In this study, we investigate a morphologically but not semantically causative construction in Turkish, which we label ‘involvee causative’ (InvC). In contrast to regular causative, the external argument in InvCs is not interpreted as an agent or causer but as merely being involved in or experiencing the event. Additionally, InvCs also differ from regular causatives in not licensing agent-oriented adverbs, instrument phrases and passivization. In previous research, failure of these diagnostics to apply has been taken as evidence for an unaccusative structure. However, we argue against such an analysis for InvCs and show that the latter contain a thematic Voice head. The above diagnostics, we conclude, are sensitive not only to the syntactic status of the external argument but also to its semantic properties, and are licensed only if the argument receives an agentive interpretation.

Spanish Anticausative Inherent Reciprocals and Syntactic Reciprocals with Se*

AbstractWithin the debate about the heterogeneity of unaccusative structures, the aim of this paper is to distinguish two types of Spanish marked anticausative inherent reciprocals (AIRs) from other syntactic reciprocals (SRs) withse. Several diagnostics show that AIRs such asmezclarse‘get mixed’ are symmetric, unaccusative, telic, and show causative alternations, while SRs are transitive and vary in their aspectual properties and do not show causative alternations. Theen/durante‘in/for’ adverbials test reveals that there are two types of AIRs: achievements such ascasarse‘get married’, and degree achievements such asmezclarse‘get mixed’. Although the clitic is an agreement marker in these reciprocal constructions, it is an expletive voice head withcasarse, a causative head withmezclarse, and an anaphor merged in the internal argument position in SRs. Differences between AIRs and SRs depend on semantic properties associated to their respective event structures.

Argument and case linking of Polish Experiencers

AbstractThis article aims to test whether the Theta System of Reinhart (1996, 2000, 2001, 2002) can account for the puzzles associated with psychological verbs in Polish. The first puzzle, called argument linking, relates to the mapping of the Experiencer onto a subject or an object position. The second puzzle, referred to as case linking, concerns the fact that Experiencers may be marked for different cases in the same sentence position. The analysis of Object Experiencer (OE)/Subject Experiencer (SE) alternations in Polish carried out in this article demonstrates that the predictions of the Theta System about Experiencer argument linking are borne out by the Polish data. SE alternants of eventive OE verbs in Polish show unergative properties, which directly follows from the mechanisms of the Theta System. However, the Theta System faces problems when confronted with dyadic OE verbs with dative Experiencers. The model predicts that dative Experiencers are merged internally, as a part of an unaccusative structure. This prediction is untenable for Polish, because dative Experiencers of dyadic predicates show some characteristics of external arguments, and hence must merge externally. Consequently, the conclusion drawn is that the Theta System can provide solutions to some, but not all, of the argument and case-linking puzzles associated with Polish Experiencers.

The syntax of variable behavior verbs: Experimental evidence from the accusative–oblique alternations in Japanese

Japanese has two types of two-place motion verbs whose ‘objects’ can be marked as either accusative or oblique (accusative–oblique alternations). Theaccusative–goal verbsmark their objects with accusative case -oor the goal marker -ni, and theaccusative–source verbsmark their objects with accusative-oor the source marker -kara. Previous studies describe systematic differences in the interpretation of the arguments of these verbs and the events they denote between the two structures. This study argues that these alternating verbs are variable behavior verbs that are linked to two distinct syntactic structures. The core evidence for this claim comes from the results of two acceptability judgment experiments with Japanese native speakers that examined: (i) selectional restrictions on the subjects of the alternating verbs and (ii) the ability of their subjects to license ‘floating’ numeral quantifiers. The results of the experiments demonstrate that the accusative–source verbs alternate between the transitive and unaccusative structures, whereas the accusative–goal verbs consistently behave like transitive verbs but assign two different structural cases to their objects. Thus, the study shows that there are multiple ways in which two-place motion verbs are mapped onto distinctive syntactic structures, whereby the core meaning of the verbs and their syntactic structures together determine their interpretation.

Binding by objects in Polish docs and please-type double object unaccusatives: Testing theoretical accounts

Abstract Our paper focuses on binding relations in the Polish piacere-type psychological verb podobać się ‘to please’. In particular, we aim to test the make-up of the argument structure of this verb, which is taken in the literature to be of a double object unaccusative verb (Belletti and Rizzi 1988; Miechowicz-Mathiasen and Scheffler 2008; Jiménez-Fernández and Rozwadowska 2016; a.o.). To this end, we conduct an experimental study, which examines the ability of pre-verbally spelled-out NOM and DAT arguments of podobać się to bind possessive pronouns/reflexives. As a point of reference, we use the results of our previous study on binding relations in Polish double object constructions (DOCs). The study revealed that the higher object, in [Spec;VP], can bind only a possessive pronoun, and not a possessive reflexive embedded in the lower object. The results of our present study display analogous binding relations in podobać się, which provides an argument in favor of the double object unaccusative structure of this verb. Based on our results, we advance a theoretical account of binding in podobać się, which assumes the Index Theory of Binding (Hestvik 1992; Nikolaeva 2014) together with a slightly modified version of a recent analysis of podobać się put forward in Jiménez-Fernández and Rozwadowska (2016).

Algumas considerações a respeito da alternância verbal na aquisição do português brasileiro

Neste artigo, propõe-se uma discussão sobre o fenômeno da alternância causativo-incoativa na aquisição do português brasileiro por meio de dados de produção espontânea. Toma-se como ponto de partida o fato de que na forma anticausativa é possível recuperar um causador implícito, ao contrário do que acontece nas sentenças inacusativas, o que evidencia estruturas diferentes para essas duas construções. Toma-se, como hipótese, que a criança, no processo de aquisição da linguagem, é sensível à diferença existente entre as anticausativas e os inacusativos.

Protosyntax: A thetic (unaccusative) stage?

We have questioned the assumption that SV (agent-action) structures are basic and primary and have shown that thetic VS unaccusative structures, involving an event+theme unit, are better candidates for simple, primary proto-syntactic “fossils.” We have shown that thetic unaccusative structures are simpler syntactically, prosodically, semantically and informationally, and have suggested that this is due to the fact that syntactic evolution progressed from a stage with thetic statements (with no arguments, such as It is cold , or with only one argument, typically unaccusative, such as Spanish Ha llegado Juan (has arrived Juan) or Serbian Pao sneg (fallen.PP snow)), to more complex categorical assertions, involving agents and a syntactic and intonational separation between the subject and the predicate. Obviously, this raises many questions. How did thetic statements intergrade into categorical statements, and what were the evolutionary factors that facilitated this transition? Did both of the informational dichotomies (Topic-Comment and Focus-Background) develop from thetic statements or are F-B structures simpler than T-C? We leave these questions for future research.

Some syntactic and semantic properties of the existential construction in Malagasy

The existential construction with the predicate – isy in Malagasy is shown to have an unaccusative structure in which the predicate may take either (i) a DP-complement, with an optional locative adjunct and an optional PP or (ii) an IP-complement. The structure is empirically supported by various facts about adverb placement, coordination, word-order, extraction, certain cases of tense-matching between – isy and a following thematic predicate, as well as the lack of the stage-level vs individual-level predicate distinction in the construction. It is argued that the predicate – isy introduces an existential quantifier binding (i) a variable that certain DPs or the locative phrase can in principle provide or (ii) the event or unprojected arguments of a thematic predicate. The definiteness effect arises from existential quantification interacting with the structure of headless relative clauses and the constraint barring strong quantifiers in predicate position.

On the locative component of French weather -ça

French admits two types of pronominal subjects with weather verbs: il (‘it’) and ça (‘that’). Some eminent authors such as Dauzat et al. (1964: 118), Picoche (1983: 99) and Grevisse (1993: 1024) assume that the centripetal locative adverb çà has in some way influenced the development of the pronominal form ça. In this paper, it is argued that the weather ça is provided with a centripetal locative feature like the adverb çà and that this feature is compatible only with the directional interpretation of weather verbs. Given that the weather ça can enter an unaccusative structure where the argumental subject of the verb occurs in a post-verbal position, it is claimed that the locative weather ça is generated in a specific syntactic position as the predicate of a small clause complement to the verb. In contrast to French weather verbs, which are unaccusative (Ruwet 1989) and which take only the auxiliary avoir (‘to have’), Italian weather verbs can take both the auxiliary essere (‘to be’) and the auxiliary avere (‘to have’) – that is they can take both an unaccusative and an unergative structure (Benincà and Cinque 1992). From an analysis comparing French and Italian, it is shown that French weather verbs taking ça as subject correspond to the unaccusative-directional version of Italian weather verbs using the auxiliary essere. It is also shown that French weather verbs which take il as subject and which do not manifest an explicit unaccusative syntax are ambiguous between an unaccusative and an unergative interpretation.

What is happened may not be what appears to be happening: a corpus study of ‘passive’ unaccusatives in L2 English

Second Language (L2) researchers have been studying ‘passive’ unaccusative errors such as What was happened?, but have not yet reached a consensus about the ultimate cause of this unique interlanguage structure. This article critically reviews five major accounts proposed in the literature, namely: • transfer of a compound tense/aspect structure in the learner's first language (L1); • overgeneralization of adjectival passive formation in English; • nontarget lexical causativization; • identification of the passive morphosyntax with the lack of a logical subject; and • nontarget overt marking of syntactic NP movement. By analysing each account in terms of its ramifications in light of the data already available in the literature and additional data from a large corpus of nonnative English, I demonstrate that the most plausible account of the ‘passive’ unaccusative structure is to regard it as an overt marker of NP movement, an overgeneralization of the passive morphosyntax of the target English.