The phenomenon of unaccusativity is a central focus for the study of the complex properties of verb classes. The Unaccusative Hypothesis, first formulated in 1978, claimed that there are two classes of intransitive verbs, the unaccusative (Jill arrived) and the unergative or agentive (Jill
sings). The hypothesis has provided a rich context for debating whether syntactic behaviour is semantically or lexically determined, the consequence of syntactic context, or a combination of these factors. No consensus has been reached. This book combines new approaches to the subject with several
papers that have achieved a significant status even though formally unpublished. Among the issues the authors address are: the determination of the unaccusative class of verbs, the problem of unaccusativity diagnostics, the implications of special morphology for the structural representation of
unaccusatives and the status of the external thematic role, the properties guiding the unergative versus unaccusative distinction in acquisition, and the properties of second-language lexicon.
Series editors' preface
Artemis Alexiadou, Elena Anagnostopoulou and Martin Everaert: Introduction
1. Gennaro Chierchia: A Semantics for unaccusatives and its syntactic consequences
2. Angeliek van Hout: Unaccusativity as telicity checking
3. Hans Bennis: Unergative adjectives and
psych-verbs
4. Artemis Alexiadou and Elena Anagnostopoulou: Voice morphology in the causative-inchoative alternation: evidence for a non unified structural analysis of unaccusatives
5. David Embick: Unaccusative syntax and verbal alternations
6. Tanya Reinhart and Tal Siloni: Against an
unaccusative analysis of reflexives
7. Markus Steinbach: Unaccusatives and anticausatives in German
8. Maaike Schoorlemmer: Syntactic unaccusativity in Russian
9. Antonella Sorace: Gradience at the lexicon-syntax interface: evidence from auxiliary selection
10. Tonjes Veenstra:
Unaccusativity in Saramaccan: the syntax of resultatives
11. Hagit Borer: The grammar machine
12. Janet Randall, Angeliek van Hout, Juergen Weissenborn and Harald Baayen: Acquiring unaccusativity: a cross-linguistic look
Index
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Artemis Alexiadou is at University of Potsdam. Elena Anagnostopoulou is at University of Crete. MArtin Everaert is at Utrecht Institute of Linguistics.
