Unaccusative Verbs Research Articles

Maxakalí has suppletion, numerals and associatives but no plurals

Abstract The Maxakalí language lacks additive plurals (akin to dog-s) on nouns, but has associative plurals, and a large set of suppletive verbs that indicate whether the internal argument is plural or not. Although it has no plural marking, Maxakalí distinguishes between count nouns and mass nouns. The former can be followed by numerals, while the latter must be coerced or occur with container words. Only count nouns can be distinguished between singular and plural with verbal number. Mass nouns always require plural verbal number. Count nouns are compatible with words like ‘many’ indicating cardinality, while mass nouns are compatible with words like ‘big’ for volume. Granulated substances have variable behavior, depending on whether treated as a whole or as several individuated items. Numerals in Maxakalí show an unusual pattern, whereby 1–3 are treated as unaccusative verbs, and 4 and up, being loanwords, are treated as unergative verbs.

An Experimental Study of L2 Acquisition of Mandarin Unaccusative Verbs by English-Speaking Learners

The present study investigates the acquisition of Chinese Mandarin unacussative verbs by English-speaking L2 leaners of Chinese, in light of Universal Grammar and Interlanguage (IL) phenomenon. The results of the experiment show that there is no strong evidence for the overpassivization of Mandarin unaccusative verbs, which calls into question the claim that the overpassivization phenomenon of unaccusative verbs is universal in second language acquisition (SLA). The L2 learners in our experiment performed better with non-alternating unaccusative verbs than alternating unaccusative verbs, which might suggest that learners were probably treating the alternating unaccusative verbs in our experiment as underlyingly transitive and thus accepted the ungrammatical passivized unaccusative verbs in the Grammaticality Judgement task. This phenomenon is consistent with child’s L1 development. We attribute the overpassivization of the Chinese unaccusative verbs in our experiment to the hypothesis of non-target lexical causativization as in L2 acquisition of English.

Testing the Interface Hypothesis: heritage speakers’ perception and production of Spanish subject position with unergative and unaccusative verbs

ABSTRACT The Interface Hypothesis proposes that the pragmatic-discursive interface with syntax is more vulnerable to crosslinguistic influence than the syntactic-semantic interface [Tsimpli, Ianthi, and Antonella Sorace. 2006. “Differentiating Interfaces: L2 Performance in Syntax- Semantics and Syntax-Discourse Phenomena.“ In Proceedings of the 30th Annual Boston Conference on Language Development, edited by D. Bamman, T. Magnitskaia, and C. Zaller, 653–664. Somerville: Cascadilla Press]. The present study tests this hypothesis by analyzing the contrast between preverbal and postverbal subject position with unergative and unaccusative verbs in the Spanish of heritage language (HL) speakers. The results of a grammaticality judgment task and a short-answer task suggest that the syntactic-semantic interface is as vulnerable to the influence of English as the pragmatic-discursive interface for Spanish HL speakers. This inquiry also considers how formal instruction targeting the flexibility of word order in Spanish and its effect on the discursive context might impact the acquisition of subject position distinction with these verbs among HL learners of Spanish. Based upon the negligible effects of a pedagogical intervention conducted in an intermediate-level Spanish HL course in which the present participants were enrolled, both the syntactic-semantic interface and the pragmatic-discursive interface appeared impervious to formal instruction targeting flexible word order.

Vestigial ergativity in Shughni: At the intersection of alignment, clitic doubling, and feature-driven movement

This paper provides an account of two related aspects of the past-tense morphosyntax of Shughni (Eastern Iranian): (i) the use of second-position clitics, rather than the verbal suffixes of the present tense, to index past-tense subjects’ φ-features; and (ii) a curious alignment pattern – sometimes referred to as vestigial ergativity – in which third-singular subjects of transitive and unergative verbs, but not unaccusative verbs, trigger a second-position clitic matched to their φ-features. After applying a battery of diagnostics to the Shughni clitics, I argue that these morphemes are the result of a clitic-doubling operation rather than agreement proper. A significant clue for this conclusion is the lack of any morphological material co-indexing third-singular unaccusative subjects, which I take to indicate that the past-tense clitics, unlike the present-tense suffixes, lack a default morpheme. This account not only provides support for the validity of diagnostics developed by previous authors for object clitics, but also highlights the importance of including subject clitics when developing a theory of clitic doubling and agreement. In the latter part of the paper, I build upon recent work on the alignment system of Davani (Western Iranian) to provide a feature-driven movement account of Shughni syntax, whereby all unaccusative subjects except third-singular move to a phase edge, where they are found by a probe on T0 and trigger a second-position clitic bearing their φ-features.

Second Language Acquisition of English Unaccusative Verbs: A Theoretical Critique and Prospects for Future Studies

Unaccusative verbs are a focus of second language acquisition research. Taking the second language acquisition of English unaccusative verbs as an example, this study first reviews the Unaccusative Hierarchy Hypothesis, the Unaccusative Trap Hypothesis and the Semantic Verb Class Hypothesis, which are exclusively concerned with the acquisition of unaccusative verbs. Then it examines the Entrenchment Hypothesis and the Interface Hypothesis, which address language acquisition in general, but shed light on the second language acquisition of English unaccusative verbs. This study maintains that these five hypothesis help to provide a panoramic view of second language acquisition of English unaccusative verbs. But it also points out that these hypotheses need to be further tested. It advises future studies to take a usage-based theoretical approach. It also calls for more attention to the possible between-verb variations, the possible influence of L1 transfer and the online processing of English unaccusative verbs

Evidence from the visual world paradigm raises questions about unaccusativity and growth curve analyses

Many syntactic theories posit a fundamental structural difference between intransitive verbs with agentive subjects (unergative verbs) and those with theme subjects (unaccusative verbs). This claim garners support from studies finding differences in the online comprehension of these verbs. The present experiments seek to replicate one such finding using the visual world paradigm (Koring, Mak, & Reuland, 2012). We control for several factors that were uncontrolled in previous studies. We find no differences in the processing of unergative and unaccusative sentences in logistic regressions and cluster analyses. However, in growth curve analyses, modeled closely on the original paper, we find differences between the verb conditions that appear to be statistically significant but are unstable across experiments. A resampling analysis reveals that the growth curve analyses are highly anticonservative, suggesting that the earlier finding was a false positive. We conclude that there is no strong evidence that unaccusatives are processed differently from unergatives. We suggest that growth curve analyses only be used with visual world paradigm data when the underlying assumptions of the analysis can be validated via resampling.

Cognate Object Constructions in Arabic

This paper aims to explore Cognate Object constructions in Modern Standard Arabic and addresses the question of whether they are arguments or adjuncts. It examines in detail the properties of these constructions. The facts related to Cognate Objects suggest that they are best seen as arguments and not as some sort of adverbial adjuncts. Unlike English and many other languages, the use of cognate objects in Modern Standard Arabic is very productive. They occur with almost all types of verbs: intransitive, unergative, unaccusative, monotransitive and ditransitive verbs. Moreover, they can be passivized, pronominalized and topicalized. The paper also presents more evidence in favour of the argument analysis and against the adjunct analysis for cognate objects in Modern Standard Arabic.

The impact of glossing and reading activity manipulation on learning of L2 lexico-grammatical and lexical items

The present study investigates the impact of glossing and reading activity manipulation on learning of target lexico-grammatical and lexical items. Eighty-eight Korean undergraduate students read either glossed or unglossed English texts. Each paragraph of the texts was split into two (less careful condition) or three to four subparts (more careful condition), and participants were asked to rearrange them into a coherent order and answer multiple-choice reading comprehension items. Glossing was conducted by providing Korean translations of target items, i.e. 15 English unaccusative verbs and 10 pseudowords. Learning was assessed with an untimed grammaticality judgment test and word form and meaning recognition tests. The results revealed that glossing affected word meaning recognition scores positively, but form recognition scores negatively. In addition, more careful reading facilitated learning of the target unaccusative verbs while having a negative influence on word meaning recognition scores. Neither glossing nor reading activity manipulation affected reading comprehension scores.

A Critical Review of the Unaccusative Trap Hypothesis: Theoretical, Conceptual and Empirical Issues

The Unaccusative Hypothesis (Perlmutter 1978; Burzio 1986) posits that intransitive verbs are not homogenous, but can be further divided into unaccusative verbs and unergative verbs. This distinction has ever since become a topic of heated discussion not only in the field of theoretical linguistics, but also in applied linguistics. Oshita (1997, 2001) proposes the Unaccusative Trap Hypothesis to delineate the mental representation and developmental path of L2 acquisition of unaccusatives. This hypothesis suggests that unaccusatives are first misanalysed by L2 learners as unergatives and L2 learners have to undergo a three-stage process before they can truly acquire the distinction between unaccusatives and unergatives. This hypothesis also predicts a U-shaped pattern in the non-target passivization and avoidance of unaccusatives by L2 learners of different levels. This study is focused on the Unaccusative Trap Hypothesis with L2 English as its main example. It first of all gives a lengthy account of this hypothesis by introducing its framework, foundations, content and predictions. Then it points out that the Unaccusative Trap Hypothesis is theoretically innovative, but conceptually inadequate and empirically controversial. Finally, this study calls for more studies to test and improve the Unaccusative Trap Hypothesis.

현대중국어 비대격 동사 ‘紅’의 통사적 특징 연구－사건의미와 논항구조를 중심으로－

현대중국어 비대격 동사 ‘紅’의 통사적 특징 연구－사건의미와 논항구조를 중심으로－

Atelic unaccusative verbs and cognate objects in Hungarian

Atelic unaccusative verbs and cognate objects in Hungarian

Time reference, morphology and prototypicality: tense production in stroke aphasia and semantic dementia in Greek

ABSTRACT The present study aims at investigating verb inflection in aphasia and semantic dementia. In particular, it addresses the contribution of time reference and morphological complexity. Moreover, it investigates whether the lexical properties of the verb, such as argument structure and lexical aspect interact with the production of tense. Ten individuals with (different types of) stroke aphasia and five individuals with semantic dementia and their respective control groups conducted a sentence completion task. Three tenses were tested: past perfective, past imperfective and present. All tenses had to be produced with three different verb classes, which differed with respect to syntactic and semantic properties: unergative, unaccusative and transitive verbs. The findings imply problems with marking aspect and an interaction between inflection and lexical aspect but no effect of morphological complexity or across the board difficulties with reference to the past in aphasia. Moreover, the results suggest problems with inflection in semantic dementia, an interaction between inflection and lexical aspect and a selective difficulty with imperfective tenses. The study contributes to a better understanding of inflection problems in aphasia and it provides evidence for inflection problems in semantic dementia.

Existential and locative constructions in Mandarin Chinese

AbstractDespite previous studies (cf. among others Huang 1987. Existential sentences in Chinese and (in)definiteness. In Eric J. Reuland & Alice G.B. Ter Meulen (eds.),The representation of (In)definiteness, 226–253. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press; Li, Yen-Hui Audrey. 1990.Order and constituency in Mandarin Chinese. Dordrecht: Kluwer; Li, Yen-Hui Audrey. 1998. Two types of existential sentences.Illinois Papers in Linguistics26. 175–191; Pan, Haihua. 1996. Imperfective aspectzhe, agent deletion, and locative inversion in Mandarin Chinese.Natural Language and Linguistic Theory14(2). 409–432), the defining characteristics of existential sentences in Chinese (including potential equivalents oflocative inversionin English) have remained controversial. This is shown to be due to the failure to acknowledge the existence of two different constructions, theexistential construction(ExC) ‘Ø V DP’ where a sentence-initial phrase indicating location (PlaceP) is not required, on the one hand, and thelocative construction(LoC) with an obligatory PlaceP, on the other: ‘PlaceP V DP’. Only the ExC can serve as a diagnostic context for unaccusative verbs, whereas the LoC allows for a wide range of verbs, including a subset of unergative verbs. Furthermore, two types of LoC need to be distinguished, depending on the type of aspect (perfective aspect -levs imperfective aspect-zhe), giving rise to different semantics. Both have, however, in common that the PlaceP occupies the subject position (SpecTP), not the topic position, and that it is merged in SpecTP, not moved there, as evidenced by the systematic lack of a corresponding source structure with the PlaceP in postverbal position.

A Corpus-based 3M Approach to the Teaching of English Unaccusative Verbs

This study attempts to take a corpus-based approach to teaching English unaccusative verbs to Chinese students in a 3M way, which is a combination of implicit and explicit instructions. It finds that Chinese students welcome the corpus-based approach and are excited to see the concordance lines retrieved from the Chinese English Learner Corpus (CLEC). And they prefer explicit instructions by the teacher, which they think is insightful and useful. But they are not keen about figuring out the usages of the target words from the context, which they think is a bit boring. This suggests that Chinese students, who have been accustomed to being spoon-fed by their teachers, are not highly autonomous. This study concludes that the corpus-based 3M approach is in general effective for the teaching of English unaccusative verbs.

Integration of Verb Subcategorization Information in L2 English Sentence Processing by Korean Learners : An Eye-Tracking Study

The present study tested whether adult Korean learners of English are able to immediately integrate verb-specific structural information (i.e. subcategorization restrictions imposed by individual verbs) as they read sentences in English. Seventeen native speakers of English and 22 Korean learners of English participated in an eye-tracking experiment, in which they read English sentences that contained a wh-dependency between the head NP and the verb of a relative clause. The relative clause verbs consisted of three types that varied in terms of subcategorization properties: transitive verbs that take an NP complement more often than a PP complement, transitive verbs that take a PP complement more often than an NP complement, and unaccusative verbs that are strictly intransitive. The results suggest that whereas native speakers use verb subcategorization information in making initial parsing decisions regarding wh-dependency formation, Korean learners are only able to integrate the information in later stages of sentence processing. Possible accounts of this discrepancy in the time course of verb information integration are discussed.

语义明晰性和丰富性在构式演变过程中的作用 : 以汉语双宾构式和存现构式为例

Semantic factor plays a decisive role in the process of construction evolution. The so-called double object constructions such as “converted verb”, “causative verb”, “conative verb” and “instrument” and so on break away from the prototype meaning of double object construction and semantic transparency requests construction to suppress them out of it; existential sentences are of unicity in semantics and semantic richness request construction to absorb unaccusative verbs, unergative verbs and transitive verbs into it. The equilibrium point of expression transparency and richness is prototype meaning of construction.

Grammatical Morphology in Aphasia: Evidence from Cantonese Classifiers

Grammatical Morphology in Aphasia: Evidence from Cantonese Classifiers

Argument realization of psychological verbs

AbstractBy using data from nearly thirty languages of various families and regions, this paper examines the argument realization of three types of psychological verbs (i.e. causative bivalent, non-causative bivalent, and monovalent). It finds that, when compared with the argument realization of core transitive verbs likeBREAK, causative bivalent psych verbs show crosslinguistic uniformity in that they pattern with core transitive verbs in argument realization. The same comparative approach finds that the argument realization of non-causative bivalent psych verbs shows a lot of crosslinguistic variation. As for monovalent psych verbs, the paper finds that they almost always pattern with the argument realization of unaccusative verbs. The findings of the paper are accounted for by using the Force-Control-Causality (FCC) model of verb meaning. Under this model, the uniformity in argument realization with respect to causative bivalent psych verbs is due to the prominence of the causative relationship expressed and the directionality of the causality from the Causer to the Causee. The variation in argument realization with respect to non-causative bivalent psych verbs can be attributed to the fact that such verbs express neither causation nor transmission of physical force. As for the near uniformity in argument realization with respect to monovalent psych verbs, it is due to the fact that they involve only one argument (thus no competition for the subject position) and this single argument shares the [−control] feature with the single argument of unaccusative verbs. This study points to the need of recognizing Causer and Causee as two core and highly-ranked thematic roles in a global thematic hierarchy.

Processing delays

Abstract An eye-tracking experiment using the Visual World Paradigm (VWP) shows that in on-line sentence processing in English the argument of an unaccusative verb reactivates late after verb offset. In contrast to previous studies, this VWP experiment establishes the exact time course of this effect, which matches the time course previously found for Dutch, despite differences in word order between the two languages. Furthermore, it uncovers an early reactivation of the argument of unergative verbs that has previously gone unnoticed. Such an effect has previously been observed for Dutch, but not for English. Moreover, the effect seems to occur earlier in English than in Dutch. We suggest that this difference may be due to the more rigid word order of English, which provides the parser with more informative cues.

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).