grammatical foundations

Verb Types

The thematic relationships are straightforward. In the lower VP we have a situation fairly similar to the VP in the previous section. The theme argument, the vase, is in the specifier of the VP as we discovered previously. The verb break therefore looks fairly similar to an unaccusative verb (we will investigate the properties of this type of verb more fully in the next section). The specifier of the vP is interpreted as an agent and therefore the light verb is clearly not unaccusative. This is not surprising as unaccusative verbs either have no complement or prepositional ones, and here the light verb has a VP complement. In terms of the UTAH, we might therefore propose that the agent -role is assigned to the specifier of a (light) verb which has a VP complement.

If we include this complex VP in a sentence, we note that it is the agent that moves to the clausal subject position and the theme appears to remain inside the VP:

(30)she1 may have [vP t1 made [VP the window open]]

As the theme does not move, we can conclude that it gets Case in its original position. Interestingly, there is no Case assigned when there is no light verb forcing the theme to move out of the VP:

(31)the window1 could have [VP t1 opened]

This is identical to what happens with unaccusative verbs (compare (31) with (22)): the theme subject receives no Case in its original VP internal position and hence has to move to the nominative subject position. So how does the theme get Case in (30)? The obvious difference is the presence of the light verb and therefore we might assume that it is this verb that is responsible for assigning accusative Case to the theme:

DP v©

Consider the event structure expressed by this verbal complex. It is fairly clear that there is one (complex) event described by the light verb and thematic verb complex: there is just one clause here with one subject. The event, however, is made up of two sub-events: she does something and this causes the vase to break:

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Note that the complex event structure is mirrored by the complex VP structure. There are two sub-events and two parts to the VP, an upper vP and a lower VP. Moreover, the vP corresponds to the first sub-event and the causative connection between the subevents. The VP corresponds to the sub-event that results from the first. This indicates that there is a connection between event structure and syntactic structure, specifically the more complex the event structure, the more complex the syntactic structure used to represent it.

2.3Ergative verbs

We have just seen that a verb like break can appear in a VP with a single theme argument which in the absence of a light verb will be the subject of the clause. This looks exactly like an unaccusative verb, yet there are differences between this class of verb and the unaccusatives. For one thing, these verbs are not movement or locative verbs, but typically involve a change of state:

(34)a the window broke b the door closed

c the glass shattered d the ship sank

e the bomb exploded f the tree grew

Furthermore, these verbs do not appear in there sentences or locative inversion structures:

(35)a *there broke a window b *there sank a ship

(36)a *in the house opened a door

b *in the cupboard shattered a glass

Apparent exceptions to these observations may again be accounted for by assuming an ambiguous status of the verb involved. For example, the verb grow can apparently behave like an unaccusative:

(37)a there grew a tree in the garden b in the garden grew a tree

In these examples, however, it might be that the verb has a locative interpretation rather than a change of state interpretation. If we force the change of state interpretation, the verb ceases to behave like an unaccusative:

(38)a the tree grew bigger

b *there grew a tree bigger

c *in the garden grew a tree bigger

Another major difference between this group of verbs and unaccusatives is that this group can apparently appear in a transitive context:

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(39)a I broke the window b she closed the door c he shattered the glass d they sank the ship

e the police exploded the bomb f the gardener grew the tree

Most unaccusatives cannot appear transitively:

(40)a *he arrived the letter

b *they departed the train

c *the magician appeared a rabbit

d *the Romans lived the Picts in Scotland

Some can, however:

(41)a we sat the guests at the table

b he stood the ladder against the wall c the rats spread the disease

d they ran a pipeline under the sea

In these cases, these verbs are unable to appear in there or locative inversion structures and so again this may be another case of ambiguity:

(42)a *there sat the host some guests at the table b *there spread the rats a disease

(43)a *against the wall stood the builder a ladder b *under the sea ran the engineers a pipeline

These verbs that have a transitive and an unaccusative use are sometimes called ergative verbs as the subject of the unaccusative version is interpreted the same as the object of the transitive version:

(44) a [the ball] rolled across the pitch

b the players rolled [the ball] across the pitch

Languages which relate the subject of the intransitive verb with the object of a transitive verb in terms of a shared case form, for example, are called Ergative languages and while it is doubtful whether the phenomenon demonstrated in (44) has anything to do with the ergativity we find in languages like Basque or Eskimo languages such as Yupik, the term is a convenient one.

The transitive version of ergative verbs all have agentive subjects and theme objects. A first attempt at representing the structure of a VP headed by an ergative might be:

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theme

Unfortunately this is an entirely different set of -role assignments to what we have previously found. We concluded above that the theme -role is assigned to the specifier of a thematic verb, not its complement position. The agent, on the other hand, was assigned to the specifier of a light verb taking a VP complement. If we are to maintain the UTAH, either the structure in (45) is inaccurate, or our analyses of unaccusative and light verbs is.

Moreover, the structure of the VP in (45) is simple, in comparison to that of verbal complexes involving light verbs, as in (32), for example. Yet the event structure expressed here is not simple. In the butler opened the door, there is an event involving the butler doing something and an event involving the door being open and clearly the first event causes the second. Hence the event structure is:

If (45) is the correct analysis, then there is a mismatch here between event structure and syntactic structure whereas in other cases we have seen there has been an isomorphism between the two.

2.3.1 Potential problems

If we accept (45), a number of puzzles arise. First consider the alternation between the transitive and unaccusative uses of ergative verbs. Why does the subject go missing in this alternation and not the object and why does the object become the subject? A possible answer to the latter question is that the unaccusative verb is unable to assign Case and hence the object must move to subject position to satisfy the Case Filter:

(47)the ship1 may have [VP sunk t1]

There is a fairly robust generalisation, named after the linguist who first noted it, Luigi Burzio, that verbs which assign no -role to their subjects, do not assign accusative Case to their objects. While Burzio’s Generalisation may offer a description of what is going on in these cases, it is an unfortunate fact that the generalisation has little in the way of explanatory content: why it should be that verbs that have no subjects cannot assign accusative Case is entirely mysterious from this perspective.

A second set of questions concerns the relationship between the transitive alternate and the structure with a light verb and the unaccusative alternate:

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(48)a Mike made the ball bounce b Mike bounced the ball

How come these structures mean virtually the same thing, especially as, as we have seen, light verbs are not without meaning? Note that the subject of the ergative verb in (48b) is interpreted as the causer of the ball’s bouncing, which is exactly the same interpretation given to the subject of make, a causative verb. The event structure of both examples is also the same:

But while the syntactic structure of (48a) is isomorphic with the event structure in (49), if we analyse the sentence in (48b) as having a structure like (45) then the syntactic isomorphism with the event structure is completely lost.

2.3.2 Light verbs and ergatives

One way to solve all these problems in one go would be to assume that the structure of the transitive alternate of an ergative verb is as follows:

bounce

Under this analysis, the UTAH can be maintained as each argument sits in exactly the position it should according to our previous analyses: the theme is the specifier of the main verb and the agent is the specifier of the abstract light verb. Moreover the event structure is represented in an isomorphic way with there being two parts to the syntactic structure each of which relate to the relevant sub-event.

The disadvantages of this analysis are: i) there is an empty light verb and ii) the wrong word order is predicted. The supposition of the empty verb is, of course, not a problem in itself. We have seen a number of instances of empty categories that are well justified and enable us to provide accounts for phenomena that would otherwise be mysterious. As long as we can independently justify the assumption of an empty element, given that language apparently makes use of such things, there is no problem in the assumption itself. There is both semantic and syntactic evidence of the existence of the empty light verb. We will return to the latter, but the semantic evidence is fairly obvious: the structure is interpreted as a causative and the presence of this meaning justifies the assumption of a light verb which provides it. Similarly, the presence of a ‘causer’ argument justifies the assumption of a predicate which assigns the relevant -

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role. As there is no such visible predicate which can do such things in (48b) our conclusion is that this predicate is ‘invisible’.

But how can we even consider (50) as a possible analysis when it obviously gets the word order wrong? The thing to remember is that what we are discussing here is the organisation of the VP at D-structure and we know that things tend to move about before we get to S-structure. Thus, if there is a plausible movement analysis which will re-arrange things so that the right word order is achieved at S-structure, then this objection will have been answered. The obvious way to achieve the correct word order would be to have the verb move to the light verb position:

DP v©

bounce1 v DP V©

e the ball V

t1

The analysis claims that the main verb moves to adjoin to the empty light verb. This is a perfectly possible movement given what we know about other movements. The movement is neither too far, violating bounding conditions, nor in violation of the Projection principle by changing lexically stated information. The movement is also structurally preserving in the way that adjunction is structurally preserving.

Of course, showing something to be a possible movement and showing it to be an actual movement are two different things. In order to justify the movement analysis in

(51)we might consider a similar construction in Hungarian. Consider the following:

(52)a legurította a labdát

down-rolled-3.s the ball-acc ‘he rolled the ball down’

ba labda legurult

the ball down-rolled

(53)a építette a házat built-3.s. the house ‘he built the house’

ba ház felépult

‘the house (became) built’

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(54) a elmozdította a dobozt away-moved-3.s. the box-acc ‘he moved the box’

ba doboz elmozdult ‘the box moved’

(55)a gépesítette a mez gazdaságot mechanised-3.s. the farmland ‘he mechanised the farmland’

ba mez gazdaság gépesült

‘the farmland (became) mechanised’

As we see in these examples, Hungarian has a similar alternation with a set of ‘change of state’ verbs. Moreover, the transitive versions all have a causative reading, just like the English examples we have been looking at. The interesting point is that the Hungarian causative verbs have a special form with the morpheme ít indicating causative:

Putting aside the issue of tense and agreement inflections, it is possible to give a very similar analysis of the Hungarian causative verbs to the one we proposed for English causatives, with a causative light verb introducing the causative interpretation and the agent subject:

DP v©

The difference between English and Hungarian, however, is that the causative element is not phonologically empty in Hungarian. The ít morpheme, however, is a bound morpheme, which means that it must attach to some appropriate stem, i.e. a verb, and this is the trigger for the movement:

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DP v©

gur1 v DP V©

-ít a labdát V

t1

Thus the main verb stem moves to the causative light verb morpheme in order to bind it. The product of the movement would obviously have to undergo further morphological processes in order to show the appropriate tense and agreement forms, but this is unimportant for the point being made here. Suppose English works in exactly the same way as this. The English causative light verb is a bound morpheme, though a phonologically null one, and differs only in this way from the non-null causative make. Thus it must be attached to the main verb and this happens by the main verb moving to adjoin to it. This would then give us an independent motivation for the movement of the verb.

2.3.3 Unaccusatives and ergatives

Let us consider further aspects of the analysis of the ergative verbs. In the causative construction, the agent is the subject and moves to the nominative position in finite clauses. However the theme stays put inside the VP. In the non-causative, unaccusative form, however, the theme is the subject and moves to the nominative position. Thus in the causative construction the theme must be assigned Case in its original position and this position must be Caseless in the absence of the causative light verb. This clearly points to the light verbs as being responsible for the accusative Case of the theme, just as we claimed for the overt causative structure:

All of this demonstrates that ergative verbs can be analysed in exactly the same way as unaccusatives, in their ‘intransitive’ use, and as being part of a causative

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construction in their ‘transitive’ use. Indeed, ergative verbs themselves are identical to unaccusatives, even in causative constructions as it is the causative light verb which supplies the extra agent argument and the causative interpretation. For this reason, many linguists refer to these kinds of verbs as unaccusatives. However, it still remains that there are differences between the unaccusative verbs we reviewed above and the ergative verbs reviewed in this section. For a start, ergatives cannot appear in the there constructions and unaccusatives cannot appear in causative constructions:

(60)a *there rolled a ball across the pitch b *there broke a glass in the cupboard

(61)a *Andrew arrived the letter b *Lucy lived Ian in Scotland

It seems then that there is a complementary distribution between these verb types. How are we to explain this? Complementary distribution patterns appear when two elements of the same type try to occupy the same position: we can have one or the other, but not both. In the causative construction, we know that there is a light verb above the VP headed by the ergative. Could there possibly be a light verb above the unaccusative VP in the there construction?

In order to evaluate this suggestion, let us consider the properties of the there construction. The most obvious property is the fact that in this construction the subject position is taken by there. This is a meaningless subject that bears no thematic role. Such things are often called pleonastic or expletive subjects and their function seems to be to act as a ‘place holder’ for the subject when no thematic element will occupy this position. For example, consider the following:

(62)a Tim1 seems [t1 to be tall] b it seems [that Tim is tall]

This is a case of raising, as introduced in chapter 3. In (62a) the subject of the lower clause is raised into the subject position of the raising verb seem, demonstrating that this position must have been empty at D-structure. In (62b), however, the thematic subject of the lower clause does not move out of this clause. In this case the subject position is filled by another expletive element it. It would be ungrammatical for this position to be left empty, an indication that all English sentences must have subjects regardless of whether one is semantically demanded or not. We will return to this observation in the next chapter. Note however that this expletive subject differs from the one used in there constructions, though their function (to fill a vacant subject position) seems to be similar. It would be ungrammatical to use a there in raising structures and it in there constructions:

(63)a *there seems [that Tim is tall] b *it arrived a letter

This observation clearly calls out for an explanation. Another thing in need of explanation is the fact the post-verbal theme obviously receives Case in this position and does not have to move to subject position. It seems that this fact goes hand in hand with the presence of the there subject as, in its absence, the theme must move to the

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subject position to get Case. This has led some to the conclusion that the there somehow has a role in the assignment of Case to the theme. One possibility is that the difference between an expletive there and an expletive it is that the former has the ability to transmit the Case that it receives by occupying the subject position. If this is so, then the post-verbal theme should get nominative Case as this is the Case that the expletive gets:

Case transmission

(64)there might have [VP settled some snow on the lawn]

nominative

It is unfortunately impossible to check this in English as we can only see visible Case morphemes on personal pronouns and these are excluded from the post-verbal position in the there construction as they are definite and only indefinite DPs can occupy this position:

(65)a *there departed him b *there lived he

A second problem with this assumption is that if there is able to transmit Case to otherwise Caseless positions, it is not entirely clear why it is not used more often to overcome similar problems when we find DPs sitting in Caseless positions.

The observation that the post-verbal DP is limited to indefinites has led to the claim that neither nominative nor accusative Case is assigned to this position, but a special Case which can only be born by indefinite DPs. Belletti (1988) proposed that partitive Case is incompatible with definite DPs for semantic reasons and therefore only indefinites can bear it. Thus if we assume that partitive Case is assigned to the post-verbal position in there constructions, we can account for why only indefinite DPs can appear in this position. The problem with this is that under these assumptions it is not entirely clear why we have a there expletive and not an it. It would seem then that the key to the proper analysis of this construction is the link between the there subject and the Case marked indefinite DP in the post-verbal position.

Of course, we also need to explain why the theme argument, that we have claimed to be generated in the specifier of the VP, sits behind the verb, not in front of it, in the there construction:

(66)a there arrived a letter b *there a letter arrived

Some of the properties of the there construction are similar to the causative construction: a Case marked theme which follows the surface position of the verb and some other element in the subject position:

These similarities can be captured if we assume that the post-verbal position of the theme is achieved by movement of the verb in front of it and this necessitates the

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