Re: THEORY: unergative

Thomas Weir wrote:
>>>
Actually, you have it precisely backwards.  'Unaccusatives' are
intransitives which, in most derivational theories of grammar,
have underlying objects, but no subjects, like 'appear'.  In
GB/PP/Minimalism that argument gets raised to get its case checked,
and surfaces as the subject in spite of itself.  They also have a
number of properties of objects of transitive verbs.  Unergative
verbs, in contrast, have underlying subjects but no object, and tend
to behave like subjects of transitive clauses, like 'dance'.  Cf:

   'There appeared several men in the room'
   *'There danced several men in the room'
<<<

Thanks Thomas (and indeed Nik).  What a fascinating concept. Perhaps I
shouldn't assume from the above that the grammaticality or otherwise
of 'There X-ed several men' is a sure-fire sign of unaccusativity, but:

'There came three wise men from the east.'

.. seems at least as acceptable as 'there appeared several men'.
Does this mean that the subject of any instance of 'come' is
underlyingly an object, or is this usage a special case (no pun
intended)?  And what about:

?'There danced three snowflakes across the window.'

My grammaticality-ometer may be playing up tonight, but I wonder
whether this is slightly more acceptable than 'There danced several
men...', and if so, whether this has anything to do with snowflakes
being prototypically less agentive than men.  Am I way off beam?

Jonathan.

[reply to jonathan underscore knibb at hotmail dot com]
--
'O dear white children casual as birds,
Playing among the ruined languages...'
Auden/Britten, 'Hymn to St. Cecilia'

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