The unaccusative hypothesis of Perlmutter (1978) andBurzio (1981,1986) claims that intransitive verbs are not homogeneous; rather, they are divided into two classes: unergative and unaccusative. This paper argues that the unaccusative hypothesis can be extended to the category of noun. Evidence supporting this claim comes from the resultative construction and accusative-case assignment in Japan...

This is because the former are lexically implicated or entailed, and thus are more available and less expensive than the latter in the sense that they involve less practical reasoning. In addition, in terms of the strong-weak distinction, an implicational universal can be posited, namely that if a language has strong resultatives, it must have weak resultatives as well (Washio 1999, 2002). Seco...

Unaccusativity, or split intransitivity, refers to the generalization that intransitive verbs divide into two subclasses, unaccusatives and unergatives. While the core arguments of unaccusatives share common properties with direct objects of transitive verbs, the core arguments of unergatives do so with transitive subjects. The Unaccusative Hypothesis (Perlmutter 1978; Burzio 1986) accounts for...

Unaccusative verbs like fall are special in that their sole argument is syntactically generated at the object position of the verb rather than at the subject position. Unaccusative verbs are derived by a lexical operation that reduces the agent from transitive verbs. Their insertion into a sentence often involves a syntactic movement from the object to the subject position. To explore the neuro...

According to the Unaccusative Hypothesis, unaccusative subjects are base-generated in object position and move to subject position. We examined this hypothesis using the cross-modal lexical priming technique, which tests whether and when an antecedent is reactivated during the online processing of a sentence. We compared sentences containing unergative verbs with sentences containing unaccusati...

This paper suggests that the theory of A-chain maturation can account for an asymmetry in the development of “full” unaccusatives and passives in Japanese. We show that the early success with full unaccusatives is due to the availability of unergative misanalysis. The nominative case marker drop phenomenon and the syntactic analysis of the full unaccusative also support this hypothesis. We clai...

In Hebrew, European Portuguese, Palestinian Arabic, and Spanish, both SV and VS orders are possible. However, when children acquire these languages, they do not use the whole array of word orders in their language at the first stage of sentence construction. Interestingly, their word order preference in the early stage of acquisition differs in the different languages: in Hebrew and European Po...

This paper argues that the dative beneficiary in Turkish has been incorrectly identified as a high applicative structure. While datives are felicitous with certain unergative and stative verbs, they show semantic restrictions unexpected on analysis. I argue instead two types: low (contra Tonyalı 2015a,b), relating applied argument to theme possessor, affected (Cuervo 2003), state of beneficiary...

This paper is concerned with the variation found with respect to how languages morphologically mark argument structure (AS) alternations, a variation that I take to be related to the realization of the syntactic Voice head. The paper discusses the behavior of dispositional middles and reflexives in languages such as English as opposed to their Greek counterparts. I will pursue the hypothesis th...