Auxiliary selection is paradoxical: categorical for some verb classes, indeterminate for others; inconsistent across languages; and misaligned with other diagnostics. After critiquing one solution to the paradox, the Auxiliary Selection Hierarchy (Sorace 2000), we propose an alternative: Parameterized Linking, which approaches the semantic underpinnings of the unaccusative/unergative distinctio...

This study investigates the knowledge of unaccusativity in Japanese native, heritage, and second/foreign language speakers with respect to licensing of floating numeral quantifiers (FNQs) by unaccusative and unergative subjects (the FNQ diagnostic). Two acceptability judgment experiments were conducted to examine (i) whether and how judgments of the three populations differ with respect to the ...

In this paper, we introduce a tripartite scheme for the classification of intransitive verbs for Hindi and claim it to be a more suitable model of classification than the classical binary unaccusative/unergative classification. We develop a multi-class SVM classifier based model for automatic classification of intransitive verbs into proposed tripartite classes. We rank the unaccusative diagnos...

The present study examines the uses of the reflexive marker in Lusaamia, a Bantu language of Kenya. In addition to being a true reflexive, the reflexive verbal prefix is also used in indirect reflexive constructions, as a middle voice / stative marker, and also to indicate when an action is being done for no particular purpose (when used in conjunction with a causative marker). I show that unac...

Previous work shows that children use syntactic information to guide their hypotheses about verb meaning. Bunger & Lidz 2004 demonstrated that 2-year-olds map novel unaccusative verbs onto just the result subevent of a complex causative event and novel transitive verbs onto the entire causative event. We present data from a new preferential looking study demonstrating that 2-year-olds map novel...

Overpassivisation, a phenomenon in which passive morphology is applied to intransitive verbs, common feature the interlanguage of L2 English learners. This study examines overpassivisation among L1 Malay ESL tertiary students concerning type verb and proficiency level. A total 499 higher educational institutions Malaysia completed grammaticality judgment test involving items with unaccusative u...

The main purpose of this paper is to provide experimental evidence that two syntactic reflexes of split intransitivity in German the selection of perfective auxiliaries and the impersonal passive construction are sensitive to an aspectual/thematic hierarchy of verb classes. We show that there is a split between ‘core’ verbs that elicit categorical intuitions from native speakers, and ‘intermedi...

This paper is intended to justify the classification of all the Russian prefixes into lexical and superlexical. It gives semantic and syntactic criteria for distinguishing between the two groups, including: the idiosyncratic or spatial lexical meaning versus operator-like function; the (in)ability to measure over objects and events; the (in)ability to stack; the (in)ability of a host verb to fo...

This note considers some of the problems raised by so-called “cognate objects” in the light of Hale & Keyser’s (1993, 1997, 1998) analysis of unergative verbs, which involves incorporation of a noun occupying the internal argument position. Unless we assume that the cognate object is post-syntactically inserted in the internal argument position (which already contains a trace/copy left by the e...