GENERAL: Special kind of intransitive verb.
Semantically, its subject does not actively initiate or is not actively responsible
for the action of the verb; rather, it has properties which it shares with the direct
object of a transitive verb (or better, with the grammatical subject of its passive
EXAMPLE: in English arrive, die and fall
are unaccusative verbs. Another term is ergative verb.
|LIT.||Burzio, L. (1986)|
SYNTAX: verb that assigns no external theta-role and no structural Case. Its argument is in object position at D-structure, but has to move to subject position in order to receive (nominative) Case (from INFL). The syntactic behaviour of unaccusatives differs in various ways from non-unaccusative intransitive verbs ( unergative verbs). In languages that have a distinction between the perfective auxiliaries 'to be' and 'to have', the unaccusatives take 'to be', while the unergatives take 'to have'. EXAMPLE: the Italian sentences in (i) and the Dutch sentences in (ii) are examples.
(i) a ha telefonato Gianni has telephoned G b è arrivato Claudio is arrived C (ii) a Jan heeft getelefoneerd J has telephoned b Klaas is gearriveerd K has arrivedFurthermore, unaccusatives cannot be passivized, as opposed to unergatives (in languages with impersonal passives). This is shown by the contrast between the Dutch (iii) and (iv).
(iii) er wordt door Jan getelefoneerd there is by J telephoned (iv) *er wordt door Klaas gearriveerd there is by K arrivedIn Italian, a further diagnostic to distinguish unaccusatives from unergatives is the possibility of ne-cliticization.
|LIT.||Belletti, A. & L. Rizzi (1981)|
Besten, H. den (1985)
Burzio, L. (1981)
Hoekstra, J. (1988)
Perlmutter, D. (1978)
Perlmutter, D. & P. Postal (1984)