Unaccusative verb
Encyclopedia
In linguistics
, an unaccusative verb is an intransitive verb
whose (syntactic
) subject
is not a (semantic
) agent
; that is, it does not actively initiate, or is not actively responsible for, the action of the verb. Unaccusative verbs thus contrast with unergative verb
s. An unaccusative verb's subject is semantically similar to the direct object of a transitive verb
, or to the subject of a verb in the passive voice
. English
unaccusative verbs include die and fall, but not run or resign, which are unergative. They are called unaccusative because, although the subject has the semantic role
of a patient, it is not assigned accusative case
.
In nominative–accusative languages, the accusative case
, which marks the direct object
of transitive verbs, usually represents the non-volitional
argument
(often the patient
). But for unaccusative verbs, the subject is non-volitional and yet is not marked by the accusative.
constructions and unaccusative constructions whereas in the second approach a more radical theory was proposed based on the analysis of expletive
there stemming from the sentences with the copula suggested in Moro 1997.
From unaccusative constructions it is possible to derive unaccusative transitive constructions complete with ergative morphology:
and dynamic
change of state or location, while unergative verbs tend to express an agentive activity (not involving directed movement). While these properties define the "core" classes of unaccusatives and unergatives, there are intermediate classes of verbs whose status is less clear (for example, verbs of existence, appearance, or continuation, verbs denoting uncontrolled processes, or motion verbs).
A number of syntactic criteria for unaccusativity have also been identified. The most well-known test is auxiliary selection in languages that use two different temporal auxiliaries (have and be) for analytic past/perfect verb forms (e.g. German
, Dutch
, French
, Italian
; even Early Modern English). In these languages, unaccusative verbs combine with be, while unergative verbs combine with have.
From one language to another, however, synonymous verbs do not always select the same auxiliary, and even within one language, a single verb may combine with either auxiliary (either depending on the meaning/context, or with no observable semantic motivation, sometimes depending on regional variation of the language). The auxiliary selection criterion therefore also identifies core classes of unaccusative and unergatives (which show the least variation within and across languages) and more peripheral classes (where variation and context effects are observed).
Other tests that have been studied involve passivization (see Impersonal passive voice
), ne/en cliticization in Italian and French, and impersonal, participial, and resultative constructions in a wide range of languages. In Japanese, the grammaticality of sentences that appear to violate syntactic rules may signal the presence of an unaccusative verb. According to transformational
models of grammar, such sentences contain a trace
located in the direct object position that helps to satisfy the mutual c-command
condition between numeral quantifiers and the noun phrases they modify (Tsujimura, 2007).
The identification of unaccusative verbs in English is based on other criteria. For example, many unaccusatives alternate with a corresponding transitive construction where the unaccusative subject appears in direct object position:
melted. ≈ melted . broke. ≈ broke .
Unaccusative past participle
s can be used as nominal modifiers with active meaning, while unergative past participles cannot:
Finally, unaccusative subjects can generally be modified by a resultative
adjunct
. This is a property shared by direct objects and passive subjects, but not shared by the subjects of unergative and transitive verbs.
Linguistics
Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. Linguistics can be broadly broken into three categories or subfields of study: language form, language meaning, and language in context....
, an unaccusative verb is an intransitive verb
Intransitive verb
In grammar, an intransitive verb is a verb that has no object. This differs from a transitive verb, which takes one or more objects. Both classes of verb are related to the concept of the transitivity of a verb....
whose (syntactic
Syntax
In linguistics, syntax is the study of the principles and rules for constructing phrases and sentences in natural languages....
) subject
Subject (grammar)
The subject is one of the two main constituents of a clause, according to a tradition that can be tracked back to Aristotle and that is associated with phrase structure grammars; the other constituent is the predicate. According to another tradition, i.e...
is not a (semantic
Semantics
Semantics is the study of meaning. It focuses on the relation between signifiers, such as words, phrases, signs and symbols, and what they stand for, their denotata....
) agent
Agent (grammar)
In linguistics, a grammatical agent is the cause or initiator of an event. Agent is the name of the thematic role...
; that is, it does not actively initiate, or is not actively responsible for, the action of the verb. Unaccusative verbs thus contrast with unergative verb
Unergative verb
An unergative verb is an intransitive verb distinguished semantically by having an agent subject. For example, in English, run, talk and resign are unergative verbs ....
s. An unaccusative verb's subject is semantically similar to the direct object of a transitive verb
Transitive verb
In syntax, a transitive verb is a verb that requires both a direct subject and one or more objects. The term is used to contrast intransitive verbs, which do not have objects.-Examples:Some examples of sentences with transitive verbs:...
, or to the subject of a verb in the passive voice
Passive voice
Passive voice is a grammatical voice common in many of the world's languages. Passive is used in a clause whose subject expresses the theme or patient of the main verb. That is, the subject undergoes an action or has its state changed. A sentence whose theme is marked as grammatical subject is...
. English
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
unaccusative verbs include die and fall, but not run or resign, which are unergative. They are called unaccusative because, although the subject has the semantic role
Theta role
In generative grammar , a theta role or θ-role is the formal device for representing syntactic argument structure required syntactically by a particular verb. For example, the verb put requires three arguments...
of a patient, it is not assigned accusative case
Grammatical case
In grammar, the case of a noun or pronoun is an inflectional form that indicates its grammatical function in a phrase, clause, or sentence. For example, a pronoun may play the role of subject , of direct object , or of possessor...
.
In nominative–accusative languages, the accusative case
Accusative case
The accusative case of a noun is the grammatical case used to mark the direct object of a transitive verb. The same case is used in many languages for the objects of prepositions...
, which marks the direct object
Object (grammar)
An object in grammar is part of a sentence, and often part of the predicate. It denotes somebody or something involved in the subject's "performance" of the verb. Basically, it is what or whom the verb is acting upon...
of transitive verbs, usually represents the non-volitional
Volition (linguistics)
In linguistics, volition refers to a distinction that is made in some languages' verb conjugations or case assignment to express whether the subject intended the action or not, or whether it was done voluntarily or accidentally....
argument
Verb argument
In linguistics, a verb argument is a phrase that appears in a syntactic relationship with the verb in a clause. In English, for example, the two most important arguments are the subject and the direct object....
(often the patient
Patient (grammar)
In linguistics, a grammatical patient, also called the target or undergoer, is the participant of a situation upon whom an action is carried out. A patient as differentiated from a theme must undergo a change in state. A theme is denoted by a stative verb, where a patient is denoted by a dynamic...
). But for unaccusative verbs, the subject is non-volitional and yet is not marked by the accusative.
Deriving unaccusativity
The derivation of the core properties of unaccusative constructions from a set of principles is one of the topmost issues of the agenda of modern syntax since the seminal work by Perlmutter 1978 (cf. Burzio 1986 and Hale-Keyser 2003 for landmark proposals). More specifically, the first approach arrived at an important consequence constituting an analogy between English passive voiceEnglish passive voice
The passive voice is a grammatical construction in which the subject of a sentence or clause denotes the recipient of the action rather than the performer...
constructions and unaccusative constructions whereas in the second approach a more radical theory was proposed based on the analysis of expletive
Syntactic expletive
Syntactic expletives are words that perform a syntactic role but contribute nothing to meaning. Expletive subjects are part of the grammar of many non-pro-drop languages such as English, whose clauses normally require overt provision of subject even when the subject can be pragmatically inferred...
there stemming from the sentences with the copula suggested in Moro 1997.
From unaccusative constructions it is possible to derive unaccusative transitive constructions complete with ergative morphology:
- मौसम फिर पलटा => मौसम ने फिर पलटा खाया
- mausam phir palaTā => mausam ne phir palTā khāyā
- weather again flipped => weather ERG again flip ate
- 'The weather flipped again.'
Tests for unaccusativity
As mentioned above, the unaccusative/unergative split in intransitive verbs can be characterized semantically. Unaccusative verbs tend to express a telicTelicity
In linguistics, telicity is the property of a verb or verb phrase that presents an action or event as being complete in some sense...
and dynamic
Dynamic verb
A dynamic or finitive verb is a verb that shows continued or progressive action on the part of the subject. This is the opposite of a stative verb....
change of state or location, while unergative verbs tend to express an agentive activity (not involving directed movement). While these properties define the "core" classes of unaccusatives and unergatives, there are intermediate classes of verbs whose status is less clear (for example, verbs of existence, appearance, or continuation, verbs denoting uncontrolled processes, or motion verbs).
A number of syntactic criteria for unaccusativity have also been identified. The most well-known test is auxiliary selection in languages that use two different temporal auxiliaries (have and be) for analytic past/perfect verb forms (e.g. German
German language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
, Dutch
Dutch language
Dutch is a West Germanic language and the native language of the majority of the population of the Netherlands, Belgium, and Suriname, the three member states of the Dutch Language Union. Most speakers live in the European Union, where it is a first language for about 23 million and a second...
, French
French language
French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
, Italian
Italian language
Italian is a Romance language spoken mainly in Europe: Italy, Switzerland, San Marino, Vatican City, by minorities in Malta, Monaco, Croatia, Slovenia, France, Libya, Eritrea, and Somalia, and by immigrant communities in the Americas and Australia...
; even Early Modern English). In these languages, unaccusative verbs combine with be, while unergative verbs combine with have.
- French:
- unaccusative: Je suis tombé. lit. "I am fallen." (= "I have fallen.")
- unergative: J'ai travaillé. "I have worked."
- Italian:
- unaccusative: È arrivato. lit. "[He] is arrived." (= "He has arrived.")
- unergative: Ha telefonato. "[He] has phoned."
From one language to another, however, synonymous verbs do not always select the same auxiliary, and even within one language, a single verb may combine with either auxiliary (either depending on the meaning/context, or with no observable semantic motivation, sometimes depending on regional variation of the language). The auxiliary selection criterion therefore also identifies core classes of unaccusative and unergatives (which show the least variation within and across languages) and more peripheral classes (where variation and context effects are observed).
Other tests that have been studied involve passivization (see Impersonal passive voice
Impersonal passive voice
The impersonal passive voice is a verb voice that decreases the valency of an intransitive verb to zero.The impersonal passive deletes the subject of an intransitive verb. In place of the verb's subject, the construction instead may include a syntactic placeholder, also called a dummy. This...
), ne/en cliticization in Italian and French, and impersonal, participial, and resultative constructions in a wide range of languages. In Japanese, the grammaticality of sentences that appear to violate syntactic rules may signal the presence of an unaccusative verb. According to transformational
Transformational grammar
In linguistics, a transformational grammar or transformational-generative grammar is a generative grammar, especially of a natural language, that has been developed in the Chomskyan tradition of phrase structure grammars...
models of grammar, such sentences contain a trace
Trace (linguistics)
In transformational grammar, a trace is an empty category that occupies a position in the syntactic structure. In some theories of syntax, traces are used in the account of constructions such as wh-movement and passive....
located in the direct object position that helps to satisfy the mutual c-command
C-command
In syntax, c-command is a relationship between nodes in parse trees. Originally defined by Tanya Reinhart ,it corresponds to the idea of "siblings and all their descendants" in family trees.-Definition and Example:...
condition between numeral quantifiers and the noun phrases they modify (Tsujimura, 2007).
Unaccusativity in English
Modern English only uses one perfect auxiliary (have), although archaic examples like "He is fallen/come" reflect the use of be with unaccusative verbs in earlier stages of the language.The identification of unaccusative verbs in English is based on other criteria. For example, many unaccusatives alternate with a corresponding transitive construction where the unaccusative subject appears in direct object position:
melted. ≈ melted . broke. ≈ broke .
Unaccusative past participle
Participle
In linguistics, a participle is a word that shares some characteristics of both verbs and adjectives. It can be used in compound verb tenses or voices , or as a modifier...
s can be used as nominal modifiers with active meaning, while unergative past participles cannot:
- unaccusative: the melted snow, the departed guests, the fallen soldiers
- unergative: *the shouted victim, *the slept child, *the hesitated leader
Finally, unaccusative subjects can generally be modified by a resultative
Resultative
A resultative is a phrase that indicates the state of a noun resulting from the completion of the verb. In the English examples below, the affected noun is shown in bold and the resulting predicate is in italics:...
adjunct
Adjunct (grammar)
In linguistics, an adjunct is an optional, or structurally dispensable, part of a sentence that, when removed, will not affect the remainder of the sentence except to discard from it some auxiliary information...
. This is a property shared by direct objects and passive subjects, but not shared by the subjects of unergative and transitive verbs.
- unaccusative subject: broke into pieces.
- direct object: broke into pieces.
- passive subject: was broken into pieces.
- unergative subject: } dined full/to death/two pounds heavier.
- subject of transitive verb: } ate full/to death/two pounds heavier.
See also
- Unaccusative verb
- Ergative verbErgative verbIn linguistics, an ergative verb is a verb that can be either transitive or intransitive, and whose subject when intransitive corresponds to its direct object when transitive.-In English:...
— transitive equivalent of unaccusative - Anticausative verbAnticausative verbAn anticausative verb is an intransitive verb that shows an event affecting its subject, while giving no semantic or syntactic indication of the cause of the event. The single argument of the anticausative verb is a patient, that is, an experiencer...
— type of unaccusative
- Ergative verb
- Unergative verbUnergative verbAn unergative verb is an intransitive verb distinguished semantically by having an agent subject. For example, in English, run, talk and resign are unergative verbs ....
— opposite of unaccusative- AccusativeAccusative verbAn accusative verb is a verb that can be used transitively or intransitively, with the subject of the transitive verb becoming the argument of the intransitive verb. Some examples in English are eat, see, win.-See also:*Unaccusative verb...
or ambitransitive verbAmbitransitive verbAn ambitransitive verb is a verb that can be used both as intransitive or as transitive without requiring a morphological change. That is, the same verb form may or may not require a direct object. English has a large number of ambitransitive verbs; examples include read, break, and understand An...
— transitive equivalent of unergative
- Accusative
- Transitivity
- Transitive verbTransitive verbIn syntax, a transitive verb is a verb that requires both a direct subject and one or more objects. The term is used to contrast intransitive verbs, which do not have objects.-Examples:Some examples of sentences with transitive verbs:...
- Intransitive verbIntransitive verbIn grammar, an intransitive verb is a verb that has no object. This differs from a transitive verb, which takes one or more objects. Both classes of verb are related to the concept of the transitivity of a verb....
- Transitive verb
- Reflexive verbReflexive verbIn grammar, a reflexive verb is a verb whose semantic agent and patient are the same. For example, the English verb to perjure is reflexive, since one can only perjure oneself...
- Deponent verbDeponent verbIn linguistics, a deponent verb is a verb that is active in meaning but takes its form from a different voice, most commonly the middle or passive. A deponent verb doesn't have active forms; it can be said to have deposited them .-Greek:...
- Impersonal passive voiceImpersonal passive voiceThe impersonal passive voice is a verb voice that decreases the valency of an intransitive verb to zero.The impersonal passive deletes the subject of an intransitive verb. In place of the verb's subject, the construction instead may include a syntactic placeholder, also called a dummy. This...
- Copula