Re: Unaccusative vs unergative ...

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.

The distinction between unaccusative and unergative verbs is structural.  The
idea is this:  Transitive verbs have two structural positions or relations,
which we could call the "subject" position/relation and the "object"
position/relation.  Unergative verbs are intransitives in which the single
argument has the basic properties of a subject.  In cases where unergative
verbs alternate with transitives, the subject of the unergative corresponds
to the subject of the transitive:

  Transitive:  John ate the sushi.
  Unergative:  John ate.

Unaccusative verbs are intransitives in which the single argument has some of
the properties usually associated with the object position/relation.  In
cases where unaccusative verbs alternate with transitives, the subject of the
unaccusative corresponds to the object of the transitive:

  Transitive:  John sank the ship.
  Unaccusative:  The ship sank.

Notice in this second pair that the noun phrase "the ship" bears the exact
same semantic relationship to the verb "sink" in both sentences.  Yet in the
first sentence it is the object of the verb, while in the second sentence it
is the subject of the verb.  How do we explain this?  In order to maintain a
consistent relationship between semantic functions and grammatical
positions/relations, we could assume that in the sentence "The ship sank",
"the ship" starts out as the direct object of the verb "sink" (as in the
transitive sentence) and is then transformed into a subject by some operation
(in Chomsky's Government-Binding theory, this operation would be movement).

Does that explain the difference adequately?  If not, I'll try again...

Matt.

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