Basis and boundaries of unaccusativity: the role of voice morphology and auxiliary selection

• Applicant: Professorin Dr. Artemis Alexiadou
• Subject Area: General and Comparative Linguistics, Experimental Linguistics, Typology, Non-European Languages
• Term: from 2003 to 2007
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 5419654

How the meanings of the verbs relate to the syntactic structures in which these verbs appear is a question of considerable importance for linguistic theory, and the research in this area focuses on verbal/diathesis alternations, i.e. alternations in the expression of verbal arguments. In addition, the connections between syntax and morphological patterns, especially to the extent that these reflect structural alternations, are becoming increasingly important for our understanding of the division of labour among grammatical components. This project investigates two phenomena that qualify as representatives of the syntax-morphology connection and are sensitive to properties of argument structure and/or verbal alternations. These are: (i) the presence of special (voice) morphology on intransitive counterparts of alternating verbs (anticausatives), standardly taken to be unaccusatives. (ii) Auxiliary selection in Perfect formation (HAVE vs. BE), standardly splitting intransitive verbs into two groups, unergative (select HAVE) vs. unaccusatives (select BE). [...]

• DFG Programme: Research Grants