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Mandarin-Speaking Toddlers ’ Acquisition of Unaccusativity
| Content Provider | Semantic Scholar |
|---|---|
| Author | Wang, Ziqi Yang, Xiaolu Shi, Rushen |
| Copyright Year | 2019 |
| Abstract | Unaccusativity describes complex properties of intransitive verbs, which offers a finer specification of verb classes than transitivity. Since Perlmutter (1978) formulated the Unaccusative Hypothesis, the studies of unaccusativity have made substantial contribution to the investigation of verb semantics, argument structure, and syntax. The hypothesis of splitting intransitivity was adopted by Burzio (1986), which took the Generative perspective to explain the syntactic difference between unaccusative verbs and unergative verbs. Although the two types of intransitive verbs have similar S-structure with a single argument as the subject, they differ in the D-structure (Rosen, 1984; Burzio, 1986). As (1) illustrates, for unaccusative verbs, such as fall in English, the S-structure subject leaves is the logical object, generated in the V complement position in the D-structure. It goes through A-movement to appear in the Spec, IP position, i.e. the subject in the S-structure. For unergatives, such as cry, the S-structure subject babies is the logical subject, generated in the Spec, VP position in the D-structure and then moves to the Spec, IP (subject) position. There are also accounts of the unaccusative-unergative distinction that focus on semantic features such as telicity, agentivity and mode of causation (e.g., Lee & Lu, 2018a; Zaenen, 1988; Van Hout, 2004; Van Valin, 1990; among others). |
| File Format | PDF HTM / HTML |
| Alternate Webpage(s) | http://www.lingref.com/bucld/43/BUCLD43-55.pdf |
| Language | English |
| Access Restriction | Open |
| Content Type | Text |
| Resource Type | Article |
