CONLANG Digest - 18 Feb 2004 to 19 Feb 2004 (#2004-49)

>
> Date:    Thu, 19 Feb 2004 00:31:09 -0600
> From:    "Thomas R. Wier" <trwier@...>
> Subject: Re: THEORY: unergative
>
> > This formation is a peculiarity of English (and a few other langs,
> > perhaps), yes? What's the 'there' doing?
>
> Yes, this is a test for unaccusativity in English.  There are variety
> of other tests.  (The most famous work on unaccusatives seems to
> come from Italian and other Romance languages.)
I once downloaded a paper, "Split intransitivity (and Unaccusativity) in
Italian (and dialectal variations)" by Barbara Rosario about it. Google
should help you find it. Italian shows split intransitivity: intransitive
verbs behave either unaccusatively or unergatively. One of the most striking
features is the selection of the auxiliary verb. Italian has two
auxiliaries, _essere_ "to be" and _avere_ "to have". Unaccusative verbs
select _essere_, unergative verbs opt for _avere_:

Leo è arrivato
Leo is arrived

but:

Lia ha parlato a lungo
Lia has spoken long

Luca