Re: THEORY: unergative

On Wed, 18 Feb 2004, Thomas R. Wier wrote:

> From:    Nik Taylor <yonjuuni@...>
> Jonathan Knibb wrote:
> > >
> > > Sorry for the blatantly non-conlang-related post, but I came across the word
> > > "unergative" today and, not being a linguist or knowing any personally,
> > > couldn't find out what it meant.
> >
> > Unergative and unaccusative refer to intransitive verbs.  An unergative
> > verb is one whose single argument is a patient, like "burn", while an
> > unaccusative verb is one whose argument is agentive, like "speak"
>
> 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'.
(Not the OP, but:) So if I have it right, accusative languages treat all
intransitive verbs as unergative and ergative languages treat all
intransitive verbs as unaccusative (grammatically, not semantically,
speaking)?

> Cf:
>
>    'There appeared several men in the room'
>    *'There danced several men in the room'
This formation is a peculiarity of English (and a few other langs,
perhaps), yes? What's the 'there' doing? Just sitting around being a
subject so that the gramatical role of 'several men' is the same as its
meaning? And thereby being further evidence that accusative/ergative/
split-s are just generalisations and concepts the languages themselves do
not bother with? (i.e. an accuastive language isn't always accusative). Or
something different?

> In Split-S languages, these two classes of intransitives are given
> overt realization.
So A Hypothetical Language Split-S English would say:
  Appeared me. (or indeed 'There appeared me.')
and
  I danced.
as the usual forms?

--
Tristan.
(with an exhausted brain tonight)