Unaccusative & unergative

Also, could someone on this list provide reasonably authoritative definitions of "unaccusative verb" and "unergative verb," with examples to illustrate the concepts?

Mark Line wrote:

I'm not sure I'd be likely to use these terms -- maybe somebody has used them to describe phenomena in a specific language. Where did you run across them?

After I queried the list about them, I found something called "The Lexicon of Linguistics" on the web, and looked the terms up there. Frankly, there's a lot in the entries that I don't understand; but I get the basic ideas well enough so that I can use them in the artlang I'm working on now. Since the "Lexicon" was not written by God, I would naturally be interested in any informed comments about the entries.

Copied from "The Lexicon of Linguistics" on the Web:
Note: I'd love to have a link to this site, please mail me if you can find it.

Unaccusative verb

Special kind of °intransitive verb. Semantically, its subject does not actively initiate or is not actively responsible for the action of the verb; rather, it has properties which it shares with the direct object of a transitive verb (or better, with the grammatical subject of its passive counterpart).
EXAMPLE: in English arrive, die and fall are unaccusative verbs.

Ergative verb.

SYNTAX: verb that assigns no °external theta-role and no structural °Case. Its argument is in object position at D-structure, but has to move to subject position in order to receive (nominative) Case (from INFL). The syntactic behaviour of unaccusatives differs in various ways from non-unaccusative intransitive verbs (°unergatives). In languages that have a distinction between the perfective auxiliaries 'to be' and 'to have', the unaccusatives take 'to be', while the unergatives take 'to have'. EXAMPLE: the Italian sentences in (1) and the Dutch sentences in (2) are examples.

1. • a telefonato Gianni
     has telephoned G
   • è arrivato Claudio
     is arrived C
2. • Jan heeft getelefoneerd
     J has telephoned
   • Klaas is gearriveerd
     K has arrived
Furthermore, unaccusatives cannot be passivized, as opposed to unergatives (in languages with impersonal passives). This is shown by the contrast between the Dutch (3) and (4).
3. er wordt door Jan getelefoneerd
   there is by J telephoned
4. *er wordt door Klaas gearriveerd
   there is by K arrived

In Italian, a further diagnostic to distinguish unaccusatives from unergatives is the possibility of ne-cliticization. LIT. Perlmutter (1978), Perlmutter & Postal (1984), Burzio (1981, 1986), Belleti & Rizzi (1981), Den Besten (1985), Hoekstra (1988), Grewendorf (1987).

Unergative verb

Special kind of °intransitive verb. Semantically, unergative verbs have a subject perceived as actively initiating or actively responsible for the action expressed by the verb.
EXAMPLE: in English run, talk and resign are unergative verbs. In syntax, unergative verbs are characterized as verbs with an °external argument. See °unaccusative verb. LIT. Perlmutter & Postal (1984), Burzio (1986).

Copyright © 1997, Jack Durst,
Last updated: 7 Jul, 1997