Re: THEORY: unergative

From:    Jonathan Knibb <j_knibb@...>
> 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)?
Well, that is actually a theoretical claim.  There are many, many
theories of grammar which do not involve any movement rules at all
(Autolexical Grammar, LFG, HPSG, GPSG, Role and Reference Grammar,
Relational Grammar...)  But you're right that in most dialects of
English 'come' is an unaccusative verb.

If you're interested in learning more about unaccusativity, check
out 'Unaccusativity: At the Syntax-Lexical Semantics Interface'
by Levin and Hovav.

 =========================================================================
Thomas Wier	       "I find it useful to meet my subjects personally,
Dept. of Linguistics    because our secret police don't get it right
University of Chicago   half the time." -- octogenarian Sheikh Zayed of
1010 E. 59th Street     Abu Dhabi, to a French reporter.
Chicago, IL 60637