Re: Unaccusative vs unergative ...

Matthew Pearson wrote:
>Andreas Johansson wrote:
>
> > Looking at the Tokana Grammar, I stumbled on the terms "unaccusative
> > intransitives" and "unergative intransitives". Despite that some
>examples
> > are given, I fail to see what the distinction is. Anybody feel like
> > explaining?
>
>OK, since I'm the one who inadvertently introduced you to this terminology,
>I
>guess I should be the one to explain it.  First of all, let me just say
>that
>the terms "unaccusative" and "unergative" are entirely misleading and
>unintuitive; I use them only because they have become standard in the
>linguistics literature.
Are there any more intuitive synonymes one could start supporting?

[snip]
>Does that explain the difference adequately? If not, I'll try again...
I think so. If I got it right, an unergative is basicly something that the
subject DOES, while an unaccusative is something DONE to the subject. So "to
dance" would be an unergative, since in "Jane dances" it's Jane(=the
subject) that does the dancing, while "to fall" is unaccusative, since in
"Jane falls" it was somebody/-thing that felled her. Is this correct?

                                                            Andreas

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