Re: Unaccusative vs unergative ...

John Cowan wrote:
>Andreas Johansson wrote:
[snip]
>>while "to fall" is unaccusative, since in
>>"Jane falls" it was somebody/-thing that felled her.
>
>While "fall" is historically the resultative of "fell", this is
>no longer strictly true; stones fall from heaven (contrary to
>Thomas Jefferson's view: "I had rather believe that two Yankee
>professors would lie, than that stones should fall from heaven"),
>but nobody actually fells them.
Eeh, I should probably written something like "it was someone/-thing (else
than herself) that caused her to fall".

BTW, I thought it was the other way around - that "to fell" was derived form
"to fall", being a causative (is that the correct term?)?

                                                         Andreas
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