基本説明
The puzzling phenomenon of unaccusativity (she arrives; she cries; etc.) is used to throw light on how syntax, semantics, lexicon, and context interact. The book include several classic papers published fot the first time.
Full Description
The phenomenon of unaccusativity is a central focus for the study of the complex properties of verb classes. The Unaccusative Hypothesis, first formulated in 1978, claimed that there are two classes of intransitive verbs, the unaccusative (Jill arrived) and the unergative or agentive (Jill sings). The hypothesis has provided a rich context for debating whether syntactic behaviour is semantically or lexically determined, the consequence of syntactic context, or a combination of these factors. No consensus has been reached. This book combines new approaches to the subject with several papers that have achieved a significant status even though formally unpublished. Among the issues the authors address are: the determination of the unaccusative class of verbs, the problem of unaccusativity diagnostics, the implications of special morphology for the structural representation of unaccusatives and the status of the external thematic role, the properties guiding the unergative versus unaccusative distinction in acquisition, and the properties of second-language lexicon.
Contents
Series editors' preface ; Introduction ; 1. A Semantics for unaccusatives and its syntactic consequences ; 2. Unaccusativity as telicity checking ; 3. Unergative adjectives and psych-verbs ; 4. Voice morphology in the causative-inchoative alternation: evidence for a non unified structural analysis of unaccusatives ; 5. Unaccusative syntax and verbal alternations ; 6. Against an unaccusative analysis of reflexives ; 7. Unaccusatives and anticausatives in German ; 8. Syntactic unaccusativity in Russian ; 9. Gradience at the lexicon-syntax interface: evidence from auxiliary selection ; 10. Unaccusativity in Saramaccan: the syntax of resultatives ; 11. The grammar machine ; 12. Acquiring unaccusativity: a cross-linguistic look ; Index
