Unaccusativity in P'urhepecha - UCSC Directory of individual web

Unaccusativity in P’urhépecha

Erik Zyman

Junior Paper, Fall 2010-2011

Advisor: Prof. Edwin Williams

Erik Zyman Unaccusativity in P’urhépecha

2

Abstract

This paper uses three unaccusative diagnostics—“passive-looking”–participle formation, subject-verb order, and passivizability—to test whether the U(naccusative) H(ypothesis) accurately describes P’urhépecha, a genetically isolated agglutinating indigenous lan-guage of central-western Mexico in which all orders of S, V, and O are attested. It is shown that passive-looking participles with active paraphrases in P’urhépecha can appar-ently be formed from predicted unaccusatives (cf. the fallen leaf) but not from predicted unergatives (cf. *the sung soloist). Short P’urhépecha sentences elicited in pragmatically neutral contexts displayed VS order (as opposed to SV) only when V was a predicted un-accusative (but VS order is not obligatory with predicted unaccusatives). Predicted unac-cusatives can passivize in P’urhépecha, but it is argued that this does not present a serious problem for the UH in P’urhépecha or in general as long as the properties of the passive morpheme are allowed to vary crosslinguistically. Along the way, apparent theoretical problems with the diagnostics are addressed: how unaccusatives can form passive-looking participles, and how postverbal unaccusative arguments can be Case-licensed. Possible objections to the data are discussed; because of these considerations, the general conclusion that P’urhépecha is accurately described by the UH must be regarded as pre-liminary. Keywords: P’urhépecha, Tarascan, unaccusative, split intransitivity, passive participles with active paraphrases, subject-verb order, SV, VS, passivized unaccusatives

Abbreviations used: ABL ablative ... PASS passive ACC accusative PFV perfective B. G. Commentāriī dē Bellō Gallicō PL plural CENTRIF centrifugal POSS possessive DAT dative PREDMID predicative middle F feminine PRET preterite HAB habitual Pro Quinct. Prō Quinctiō id. idiomatic translation PROG progressive IMPF imperfect PRS present IND indicative PST past INSTR instrumental Q. F. Epistulae ad Quintum Frātrem intr(ans). intransitive RECIP reciprocal INTRG interrogative REFL reflexive lit. literal translation SG singular LOC locative SUBJ subject LOCREPL locative replacive tr(ans). transitive M masculine 1 first person MID middle 3 third person N neuter + portmanteau morpheme NMLZR nominalizer = clitic attachment site NOM nominative ? uncertain gloss or translation NONPST nonpast ?? very uncertain gloss or translation PART participle


3

Overview of Contents

I. Introduction A. The Unaccusative Hypothesis B. P’urhépecha C. Motivation D. Method

II. Further background: a sampling of unaccusativity phenomena

A. English resultative modifiers B. English cognate objects C. German Was für X D. Russian distributive po E. Georgian case marking

III. Unaccusativity phenomena investigated in P’urhépecha

A. “Passive-looking” participles B. Subject-verb order C. Passivizability

IV. Conclusion

A. Summary B. Implications for the Unaccusative Hypothesis C. Suggestions for future research


4

Unaccusativity in P’urhépecha1

I. Introduction

The Unaccusative Hypothesis

Ever since it was proposed to account for some differences in the behavior of differ-

ent intransitive verbs, the U(naccusative) H(ypothesis) has been a major focus of research

on the interface between syntax and lexical semantics. The UH (Perlmutter (1978), Bur-

zio (1986)),2 an idea also known as split intransitivity, posits that intransitive verbs are

divided into two classes—unergatives and unaccusatives—associated with the distinct

underlying syntactic configurations in (1) and (2), respectively:3

(1)0

(2)0

Levin and Rappaport Hovav (1995) characterize the unergative/unaccusative distinction

as follows. An intransitive verb necessarily has only one syntactically overt nominal ar-

gument. If that argument is an Agent (as in (3)) or an Experiencer (as in (4)), the verb is

1I would like to thank first and foremost the two P’urhépecha speakers who chose to participate in this study and so generously expended time and energy sharing with me their knowledge of their language: Javier Mellápeti Cuiriz and a speaker who did not indicate that (s)he wished to be mentioned by name. I would further like to thank all the other people, P’urhépecha and otherwise, who gave me helpful advice and pointed me in the right direction when I was looking for speakers who would be willing to participate, including Prof. Adele Goldberg, who gave me tips on the process of obtaining IRB approval, and Violeta Vázquez-Rojas. Warm thanks are also owed to Dr. Frida Villavicencio for providing me with valuable con-tacts, references, materials, and ideas, and to my advisor, Prof. Edwin Williams, for fruitful discussions and feedback that helped me shape the course of this project. 2A brief overview of the intellectual history of the UH is given in Pullum (1988). 3For simplicity, these trees disregard the VP-Internal–Subject Hypothesis and a great deal of functional structure. They also depict the head-complement order of head-initial languages. Lastly, they use Bare Phrase Structure rather than the X′ schema; nothing in the paper, as far as I can tell, hinges on this choice.


5

unergative. If the argument is a Theme (as in (5)) or Patient (as in (6)),4 the verb is unac-

cusative.

(3)0 *Sara ate. (4)0 *Isaac laughed. (5)0 *The glass fell. (6)0 *The patient5 recovered.

The immediate syntactic reflex of a verb’s unergative or unaccusative status is its appear-

ance in the configuration in (1) or (2), respectively. Thus, which of these classes an in-

transitive verb belongs to is semantically determined and syntactically represented.

According to the UH, the nominal argument of an unaccusative is not only semanti-

cally but also syntactically parallel to the direct object of a transitive verb. Of course, in

English, putative unaccusative subjects cannot ordinarily follow the verb:

(7)0 *Fell the glass. (cf. (5)) (8)0 *Recovered the patient. (cf. (6)) The standard generative account of this fact is as follows. Unaccusatives, unlike transi-

tives, cannot assign6 their postverbal arguments accusative Case (hence their name). But

because every nominal maximal projection must receive Case, the unaccusative argument

moves from postverbal position to the position where nominative Case is assigned to the

subjects of unergatives and transitives. Thus, the unaccusative argument receives nomina-

tive and the utterance is well formed, all else being equal.

It has been claimed that the phenomena predicted by the UH are universal (see e.g.

Hirakawa (2000), p. 35). If this is the case, then we should expect to find evidence for the

UH in a wide variety of languages. In this paper, I use three unaccusative diagnostics to

4The terms Theme and Patient are used slightly differently by different researchers. These small differences in θ-role nomenclature are not terribly important. Nevertheless, I use Theme to mean an argument referring to something inanimate that is moved or acted upon or otherwise undergoes a change of state, and Patient for its animate counterpart. Another name for this general type of θ-role is Undergoer. 5The fact that the DP realizing the Patient argument of the unaccusative verb recover in this sentence is semantically headed by the noun patient is pure coincidence! 6Until it comes time to start implementing my proposal for P’urhépecha more explicitly, I will use the no-tions of Case assignment and Case checking interchangeably.


6

determine whether there is any evidence for the UH in P’urhépecha, an indigenous lan-

guage of Mexico. If there is, then the claim that the unergative/unaccusative distinction is

universal will be one step closer to being acceptably substantiated. If, however, these di-

agnostics fail to provide evidence for the distinction in P’urhépecha, then further research

will be required to determine whether the language truly harbors no evidence of the dis-

tinction or, rather, it does, but different diagnostics are needed to bring it to light.

P’urhépecha

P’urhépecha, also known as Tarascan, is a genetically isolated indigenous language

of Michoacán, a state in central-western Mexico, spoken by at least 100,000 people

(Chamoreau (2007)).7 P’urhépecha is an agglutinating language with a moderate amount

of inflectional morphology (Wares (1974)), including overt case marking, and extensive

derivational morphology, which is exclusively suffixing (Mendoza (2007)). Chamoreau

(2007) reports that the basic constituent order, at least in the Eastern region, is SVO, but

all six orders of those constituents are attested, and these permutations do not change the

constituents’ syntactic functions—or, presumably, their θ-roles. The rules governing

P’urhépecha word order are far from fully elucidated (Dr. Frida Villavicencio, p.c.), but

at least some of the variation appears to be due to information-structural considerations

such as topic, focus, and givenness (Chamoreau (2007)).8

7The Ethnologue reports 40,000 speakers of “Purépecha” in Mexico (according to the 2005 census) and 850 in the United States, specifically in California, North Carolina, Oregon, and Tennessee (2000 census), and 135,000 speakers in Mexico of “Western Highland Purépecha.” Alternate names for both varieties are pro-vided at http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=tsz and http://www.ethnologue.com/show_ language.asp?code=pua . 8For comparison, there have been several attempts to ascribe to information structure the syntactic variation displayed by Classical Latin (e.g., Devine & Stephens (2006)) and Ancient Greek, two languages notorious for their very flexible word order. Analogous research on P’urhépecha would obviously be most desirable.


7

Motivation

There are two principal reasons why testing the UH in P’urhépecha should be illumi-

nating. First, P’urhépecha has important typological differences from the languages that

have received the most attention in linguistic research. As just mentioned, it is agglutinat-

ing and allows all orders of the constituents S, V, and O (albeit with information-

structural consequences). It should therefore be able to help us determine whether unac-

cusativity effects are truly universal or are merely a hallmark of more familiar languages.

Secondly, and especially excitingly, it is an isolate. Testing potential universals in lan-

guages with no known relatives is particularly worthwhile. If a language that does have

known relatives displays a property whose universal or language-particular status is being

investigated, the following criticism will often be available: “Its relatives display the

same property, so this isn’t news—its retention of the property from these languages’

common ancestor is just a fact of history and needn’t be ascribed to anything universal.”

With language isolates, this objection is much more difficult to raise, so when they dis-

play such a property, we need to seriously consider the possibility that it might be an at-

tribute not just of the language in question but of human language itself.

Method

To determine whether there is any evidence for the UH in P’urhépecha, I relied on

two different methods of collecting data. One of them was plumbing the existing linguis-

tics literature on P’urhépecha. The other was elicitation; specifically, I asked two native

speakers9 whom I contacted over the Internet to answer written questionnaires by e-mail.

9I contacted many more, but only these two were able to participate in the study.


8

All numbered P’urhépecha examples whose source is not cited were elicited, and it is in-

dicated which speaker produced them.

II. Further background: a sampling of unaccusativity phenomena

Before proceeding to the P’urhépecha data, I will provide summaries of a fraction of

the syntactic and morphological phenomena that researchers have explained by appealing

to the UH, in order to put this study in context. In writing this discussion, I have relied

heavily on a handout of unaccusativity phenomena by Jason Merchant.

English resultative modifiers

Levin and Rappaport Hovav (1995) (henceforth L&RH), basing themselves on

Simpson (1983), have proposed the Direct Object Restriction (DOR): a resultative phrase

in English can be predicated of the direct object of a transitive verb (as in (9)), but not of

its oblique argument (see (10), interpretation 1) or subject (as in (10), interpretation 2).

(9) *Julia burned the cookies black. (based on L&RH, p. 35) (10) *James shot at John dead. (based on Simpson (1983), (27b), p. 147)

*‘James shot at John with the result that John died.’ / ‘…that James died.’ A resultative phrase can be predicated of the subject of a passive verb:

(11) *The floor had been swept clean. (Merchant (handout), based on L&RH, (18a), p. 39)

but this is expected under the standard (i.e., transformational) generative account of pas-

sivization,10 and hence predicted by the DOR.

The subject of an active verb can be modified by a secondary predicate, but this

predicate must receive a depictive, not a resultative, interpretation. To illustrate,

10This account is summarized in Section III in the discussion of “passive-looking” participles.


9

(12) *Julia burned the cookies dirty. (L&RH, p. 35) can mean that Julia burned the cookies while dirty (a description of her), but not that she

became dirty as a result of burning them.

So far we have only examined resultative and depictive predicates in sentences

where the verb has an internal argument. What about intransitive sentences? If the verb is

predicted on semantic grounds to be unergative,11 a resultative expression can be predi-

cated of its subject only by means of a so-called fake reflexive12 (Simpson 1983):

(13) *They laughed *(themselves) helpless. (Merchant (handout)) * ‘They laughed with the result that they became helpless.’

All this suggests that a resultative expression can only be predicated of a postverbal DP,

regardless of whether this DP is an argument of the verb or not (see fn. 12). But one class

of examples systematically violate this generalization:

(14) *The river froze solid. (15) *The bottle broke open.

The exceptional behavior of sentences containing these verbs can be explained (or at least

reduced to the independently necessary DOR) by the UH. Freeze and break are predicted

to be unaccusative, so according to the UH, their subjects started out in direct-object posi-

tion, explaining why they can be modified by resultative predicates.

11In the rest of this paper, whenever I speak of predicted unergatives or unaccusatives, it should be under-stood that the basis of the prediction is the verb’s meaning. 12This phrase is called a fake reflexive in contradistinction to the prototypical use of reflexive anaphors, in which the anaphor is an argument of the verb: xxx(i) *John saw himself. This is clearly not the case in (13), as shown by the fact that xxx(ii) *They laughed themselves. is ungrammatical with the intended reading (with the nuclear stress on laughed). (It is irrelevantly gram-matical under the emphatic reading of the reflexive, which is comparable to that in I did it myself.)


10

Now, we know that certain verbs that typically have only one argument, such as

laugh and bark, can sometimes appear with cognate objects:

(16) *They laughed a hearty laugh. (17) *The dog barked a loud bark. This indicates that these verbs, although prototypically intransitive, can sometimes assign

accusative Case. Let us assume that accusative Case is assigned to a postverbal DP by the

verb even when it is not an argument of the verb (as in the grammatical version of (13)).

If this is the case, then we predict that a nonargumental postverbal DP should only be

able to receive accusative Case if the verb is unergative, but not if it is unaccusative

(since, after all, unaccusatives cannot assign accusative Case). This prediction is borne

out:

(18) *The dog barked him awake. (based on L&RH, (6a), p. 36; cf. (17)) (19) *The snow melted the road slushy. (L&RH, (20c), p. 39)

*‘The snow melted, with the result that the road became slushy.’

English cognate objects

As shown in (16-17), some prototypically intransitive verbs can take cognate ob-

jects.13 Others, however, cannot:

(20) *Karen appeared a striking appearance at the department party. (ibid., (37a), p. 150)

(21) *Phyllis existed a peaceful existence. (ibid., (37b), p. 150) (22) *The statue stood a heroic stance in the middle of the common.

(ibid., (45a), p. 152) (23) *The city sprawled an extensive sprawl around the bay.

(ibid., (45b), p. 152)

13Cognate objects (or cognate accusatives) are so called because they are typically etymologically related to the verb, as in (16-17) and (20-23). (The etymological kinship between stood and stance in (22) is more distant than in the other cases.)


11

If we assume that cognate objects are assigned accusative Case,14 then their ungrammati-

cality in (20-23) can be explained by the UH if the verbs in those sentences are unaccusa-

tive.15

German Was für X

Grewendorf (1989) notes that, in German, the Was ‘what’ in the wh-expression Was

für X ‘what kind of X’ can undergo overt wh-movement if Was für X is underlyingly in

direct-object position, as in (24), but not if it is underlyingly the subject of a transitive or

intransitive verb, as in (25) and (26) respectively:16

(24) *Was hast du für Bücher gekauft? (Merchant (handout)) *what have you for books bought *‘What kind of books did you buy?’

(25) *Was haben für Studenten Bücher gelesen? (ibid.) *what have for students books read *‘What kind of students read.PST books?’ (26) *Was haben für Leute gearbeitet? (Grewendorf (1989), (70), p. 32) *what have for people worked *‘What kind of people worked?’

Was can be extracted from a Was für X phrase that is a passive subject, as in (27), but

again this is predicted under the transformational account of passivization:

(27) *Was sind in der Kantine für Leute gesehen worden? *what are in the canteen for people seen been

14This is visible overtly in Latin and Ancient Greek, which have pervasive morphological case marking. 15However, Iwasaki (2007), writing from a Cognitive Grammar standpoint, provides numerous counterex-amples (cited from Kuno & Takami (2004)) involving cognate objects with predicted unaccusatives, sug-gesting that generative linguists may have to revise their understanding of this phenomenon. A few (Iwa-saki’s (4a) and (4c-f)) are xxx(iii) The tree grew a century’s growth within only ten years. xxx(iv) The stock market dropped its largest drop in three years today. xxx(v) The stock market slid a surprising 2% slide today. xxx(vi) Stanley watched as the ball bounced a funny little bounce right into the shortstop’s glove. xxx(vii) The apples fell just a short fall to the lower deck, and so were not too badly bruised. 16Some of the examples have been very slightly modified.


12

*‘What kind of people were seen in the canteen?’ (ibid., (72), p. 32) In some cases, however, Was can be extracted from a Was für X that is seemingly the

subject of an active intransitive verb:

(28) *Was sind für Leute angekommen? (ibid., (71), p. 32) *what are for people arrived *‘What kind of people arrived?’

This can be explained if ankommen ‘arrive’ and other verbs that behave this way are un-

accusative, and hence their subjects start out in direct-object position. Merchant (hand-

out) notes that phenomena analogous to Was für X occur in Dutch and Swedish.

Russian distributive po

Pesetsky (1982) and Schoorlemmer (2004) (cited in Merchant (handout)) show that

the Russian distributive “particle” po17 can occur within the extended projection of an NP

in direct-object position (as in (29)), but not within that of an NP that is the subject of a

transitive or intransitive verb, as in (30) and (31) respectively:18

(29) ??ja polučal [po pis’mu] v den’. ??I.NOM received.M.SG [PO letter.DAT.SG in day ?? ‘I received a letter each day.’ (Pesetsky (1982), (61a), p. 70)

(30) ??[po studentu] ubilo košku v každoj gruppe. ??[PO student.M.DAT.SG killed.N.SG cat.F.ACC.SG in each group ?? ‘A (different) student killed a cat in each group.’ (ibid., (62a), p. 71) (31) ??[po sobake] kusaetsja v každoj kletke. ??[PO dog.F.DAT.SG bites in each cage ?? ‘A (different) dog bites in each cage.’ (ibid., (62b), p. 71)

17Pesetsky (1982) notes that “[p]o is a preposition in other usages, and may be” here too. Harves (2003) assumes it is a preposition on distributional grounds (see her fn. 6). 18According to Pesetsky (1982), the judgments on (30) and (31) vary from ? to *; the ??s shown (repro-duced from Pesetsky) represent a compromise.


13

Po can occur within the extended projection of an NP that is a passive subject, which can

be explained, as usual, by appealing to the transformational account of passivization:

(32) ??každyj den’, [po gorodu] bylo vzjato vragom. ??each day [PO city.DAT.SG was taken enemy.M.INSTR.SG (N.SG) ?? ‘Each day, a (different) city was taken by the enemy.’ (ibid., (61b), p. 70)

However, a po-phrase can sometimes occur as the subject of an (active) intransitive verb:

(33) ??[po jabloku] upalo s každogo dereva. ??[PO apple.DAT.SG fell.N.SG from each tree ??‘A (different) apple fell from each tree.’

(ibid., (61c), p. 70, citing Babby (1980), p. 45)

By the same line of reasoning that we have been using, we can explain the otherwise ex-

ceptional behavior of sentences like (33) under the UH: po is licensed in the subject

phrase because this phrase originated in direct-object position. The UH predicts that po

should be licensed in the subject of upalo ‘fell’, because ‘fall’, which assigns a Theme or

Patient θ-role, is a classic unaccusative. As we have seen, this prediction is correct.19

Georgian case marking

Georgian has an elaborate case-marking system in which different subsystems are

deployed depending on the tense and aspect of the clause (Harris (1982)). In Series II

forms (aorist, optative, and imperative), the case marking is as follows:

(34) Verb type Subject case marker Direct-object case marker transitive -ma -i “active” intransitive20 -ma — “inactive” intransitive -i —

19Po can appear within the subject of an unergative verb if the subject contains a numeral, as in po dva tur-ista ‘PO two tourists’ (Borik (1995), cited in Harves (2003)). The distribution of po-phrases can therefore not be used as an unaccusative diagnostic if the phrases in question contain numerals. 20The term active here is unrelated to the active voice: “[t]he labels ‘active’ and ‘inactive’ are somewhat impressionistic, but they refer to clear-cut classes established on the basis of morphological criteria” (Harris (1982), p. 294).


14

As we can see, the subjects of some intransitive verbs are case-marked like subjects of

transitive verbs, whereas the subjects of other intransitive verbs receive the same case

marking as direct objects. The paradigm in (34) can be given a coherent explanation un-

der the UH if all -ma–marked arguments are subjects throughout the derivation and all -i–

arguments start out as direct objects, becoming subjects when the verb is an “inactive”

intransitive. Such an account would predict that “active” and “inactive” intransitives

should pattern semantically like unergative and unaccusative verbs, and this indeed ap-

pears to be the case:

(35) “Active” intransitive

Meaning “Inactive” intransitive

Meaning

a. iq’vira ‘he yelled’ d. iqo ‘he was’ b. icurava ‘he swam’ e. darča ‘he stayed’ c. imusava ‘he worked’ f. daixrčo ‘he drowned’ g. gat’qda ‘it broke’ h. gaišra ‘it dried’

(Harris (1982), p. 294)

III. Unaccusativity phenomena investigated in P’urhépecha

In this section I will discuss the three unaccusativity-related phenomena that I inves-

tigated in P’urhépecha. For each phenomenon, I will provide theoretical background be-

fore proceeding to the P’urhépecha data.

A. “Passive-looking” participles

Another phenomenon that has been associated with unaccusativity crosslinguistically

involves passive-looking participles.21 In English, the past participle of a transitive verb

21By passive-looking participles I mean participles that appear to be passive in form, regardless of whether they have passive or active paraphrases.


15

can be used to modify a noun (or projection thereof). A past participle so used can be

paraphrased with a passive relative clause:

(36) *a dishonored city *‘a city that has been dishonored’

Past participles used to modify nominal projections in this way are called Adjectival Past

Participles or Adjectival Perfect Participles (APPs) (Cetnarowska (2000), fn. 3).22 Let us

assume, on the basis of examples like (36), that all APPs are essentially passive (both

morphologically and semantically). Intransitive verbs in English cannot passivize, so they

should not be able to form APPs. The verb dine is obligatorily intransitive (it cannot take

a direct object):

(37) *Melvin dined. (Pinker (1994), p. 112) (38) *Melvin dined the pizza.

(cf. Melvin dined on the pizza.)

And, as predicted, it cannot form an APP: (39) *the dined pizza

However, as is well known, a class of English intransitives can in fact form APPs

(Bresnan (1978) and Bresnan (2001), cited in Kibort (2005)):23

(40) a. elapsed time e. a lapsed Catholic i. a stuck window b. a fallen leaf f. a failed writer j. an escaped convict c. the drifted snow g. wilted lettuce k. a risen Christ d. a collapsed lung h. a grown man l. an undescended testicle

Each of the phrases in (40) can be paraphrased using a relative clause, but this clause

must be active, not passive. Thus elapsed time can be paraphrased as time that has

22This footnote in Cetnarowska (2000) also mentions the terms past participle adjective, adjectival passive, and (for Dutch) ge-adjective, and gives an overview of which researchers have used which terms. Marvin (MS, 2000) carefully distinguishes between past and perfect participles on tense-semantic grounds; this distinction will not concern us here. 23Cetnarowska (2000) notes two constraints on APPs proposed by Ackerman and Goldberg (1996): the Nonredundancy Constraint (p. 66) and Paradigmatic Informativeness (endnote 14), and extends the former to Polish. See her article for discussion.


16

elapsed, not *time that has been elapsed.24 As has been noted, all the verbs from which

the APPs in (40) are derived are predicted to be unaccusative. Predicted unergatives such

as dine, by contrast, generally cannot form APPs.

The phenomenon we see in (40)—predicted unaccusatives forming “actively para-

phrasable” participles the way transitives form passive participles—is attested crosslin-

guistically, as shown in (41). For brevity’s sake, I have included only one transitive and

one unaccusative per language; additional examples may be found for Modern Greek in

Markantonatou (1995), for Polish (unaccusatives only) in Cetnarowska (2000), and for

most of the other languages in (41) in Haspelmath (2004) (which draws heavily on other

sources).

24A few of the phrases in (40) can be paraphrased using a passive relative clause, but in most cases this does not correspond to the (typical) meaning of the phrase. For instance, (40f) a failed writer is almost in-variably interpreted as ‘a writer who has failed’, but one could probably conceive of a passive paraphrase such as ‘a (student) writer who has been failed (by his or her professor)’. The cases of (40d) a collapsed lung and (40g) wilted lettuce are slightly more subtle. These phrases would typically be interpreted as ‘a lung that has collapsed’ and ‘lettuce that has wilted’ respectively, but I think one could construct contexts that would license the passive interpretations ‘a lung that has been collapsed’ and ‘lettuce that has been wilted’: xxx(viii) *[Context: looking at a lung that has just been collapsed by a surgeon.] xxx(viii) *That is one collapsed lung. xxx(ix) *[Context: the speaker has just been informed that his or her lettuce has been wilted by the sun.] xxx(viii) *Dammit! I hate wilted lettuce! In all the cases where a passive paraphrase is possible, the intransitive verb in question can also be transi-tive, and it is from the transitive version that the (truly passive) APP is derived. Example (40i) a stuck window would probably be paraphrased most naturally by a window that has gotten stuck, but it is much better paraphrased by a window that has stuck than by #a window that has been stuck. This last paraphrase is as impossible as *time that has been elapsed if the stuck in the paraphrase is inter-preted as a verb, but this fact is somewhat obscured by the ability of stuck to be interpreted as an adjective.


17

(41) Language Transitive verb

Passive participle or “verbal adjec-tive”

Predicted unaccusa-tive

“Actively paraphrasable” participle

kataba maktuub talifa matluuf a. Arabic ‘wrote’ ‘written’ ‘be annihilated’ ‘ruined’ egesít egesít-ett ér ér-ett b. Hungarian ‘unite’ ‘united’ ‘reach’ ‘ripe’ lê-ŋìn lé-gátà bô-ŋìn bo-gátà c. Kanuri

(Saharan) ‘I touch’ ‘touched’ ‘I lie down’ ‘lying’ yuup- yuup-na kyim- kyim-na d. Mam

(Mayan) ‘put out (fire)’ ‘extinguished’ ‘die’ ‘dead’ mbù mbùmbù fǐ fǐfǐ e. Margi

(Chadic) ‘sew’ ‘sewn’ ‘swell’ ‘swollen’ ðiaváz-o ðiavas-ménos peθén-o peθa-ménos f. Modern

Greek25 ‘I read’ ‘read’ ‘die’ ‘dead, having died’ tovi-x tovi-mol bee-x bee-mel g. Mongolian ‘to engrave’ ‘engraved’ ‘to rot’ ‘rotten’ pu’ma pu’ma-sa’26 upu’ma y-upu’ma-sa’ h. Panare

(Carib) ‘kill’ ‘killed’ ‘fall’ ‘fallen’ prometer prometido caer(=se) caído i. Spanish ‘to promise’ ‘promised’ ‘to fall’ ‘fallen’ kır-mak kır-ık sol-mak sol-uk j. Turkish ‘break (tr.)’ ‘broken’ ‘wilt’ ‘wilted’

All examples from Haspelmath (1994) except the Spanish ones.27 25I have changed the transcription of the forms of the verb ‘read’ on the basis of “The Greek Alphabet,” slide 3. 26The Panare morpheme -sa’ is cited by Haspelmath (1994) as a nominalizer. 27After I researched passive-looking participles in P’urhépecha to see if they constituted evidence for split intransitivity, I became aware that some transitive and predicted unergative verbs can form passive-looking participles used to modify nouns understood as the Agents and Experiencers of those verbs: (x) a. a confessed killer ‘a killer who has confessed (his/her crime)’ b. a recanted Chomskyan ‘a Chomskyan who has recanted (his/her opinion about

Chomsky)’ c. (un)declared juniors ‘juniors who have (not) declared (their majors)’ d. a practiced liar ‘a liar who has practiced (lying)’ e. an unbuilt architect ‘an architect who has not built (buildings)’ f. Are you packed? ‘Have you packed (your suitcases)?’ g. The actors weren’t memorized. ‘The actors hadn’t memorized (their lines).’ (Examples (a-e) are from Bresnan (2001), cited in Kibort (2005).) Analogous examples are given by Kibort (2005) for Polish. Haspelmath (2004) notes that German unerga-tives that normally cannot form “actively paraphrasable” passive-looking participles can if they are teli-cized, and that the same is true for Hindi unergatives and transitives. None of the transitives or predicted unergatives that can form “actively paraphrasable” passive-looking participles that I have seen are obliga-torily intransitive. While this may conceivably turn out to be relevant, the facts in this footnote constitute a considerable challenge to the validity of participles as an unaccusative diagnostic. When we see later on that this diagnostic suggests that P’urhépecha does in fact have split intransitivity, those results will be con-vincing to the extent only that the participle test can still be used as a convenient proxy for determining


18

A garden-variety APP such as dishonored in (36) a dishonored city is passive seman-

tically and, apparently, morphologically. By this last point I mean that such an APP ap-

pears identical to the passive participle used in the verbal passive, as in the city has been

dishonored. Both involve the passive morpheme (typically referred to as -en in English,

although this is a restricted allomorph) familiar from the verbal passive. Given that the

“actively paraphrasable” APPs in (40) appear to use (the allomorphs of) the same mor-

pheme, it is natural to seek a unified explanation for the formation of “actively” and “pas-

sively paraphrasable” APPs. However, a quick review of the standard generative account

of passivization will show that, if said account is accepted, providing such a unified ex-

planation is not straightforward.

Passivization

The account may be sketched as follows.28 A typical transitive verb subcategorizes

for a direct object, to which it assigns accusative Case. It also has an external argument

(EA), to which it typically assigns an Agent or Experiencer θ-role, and an internal argu-

ment (IA, often a Theme or Patient).29 Upon being added to the verb, the passive mor-

pheme, -en, “absorbs” the accusative Case that the verb assigns, accounting for passive

verbs’ inability to assign this Case to nominal expressions:

(42) *It was seen Mary. (cf. Mary was seen.)

whether a language has split intransitivity (cf. the crosslinguistic correlation between unaccusativity and the ability to form “actively paraphrasable” passive-looking participles in (41)). 28I have provided a “traditional” account that abstracts away from the more recent AgrO/little-v hypothesis. 29For simplicity, verbs that fulfill these criteria but have additional θ-roles and c-selectional possibilities are omitted from the discussion.


19

The passive morpheme also internalizes the verb’s EA (and makes it optional), account-

ing for why this argument can optionally appear as an oblique:

(43) *Mary was seen (by John).

but not in the VP-external position characteristic of EAs:

(44) a. *John Mary was seen. b. *Mary John was seen.30 In fact, that position is filled by the underlying direct object: because the object cannot be

assigned accusative Case in its base position, it moves to the position where subjects are

assigned nominative Case, which is not occupied by the former EA because the latter has

been internalized.31

The problem we face in trying to extend this account of passivization to “actively

paraphrasable” APPs is the following. If the passive morpheme -en deprives a verb of its

EA and its ability to assign accusative Case to its underlying direct object, then how can

it attach to unaccusatives, which putatively have no EA and no accusative-Case–

assigning ability at all?

Haspelmath’s account

As we have seen, an APP can be used to modify a nominal projection interpreted as

either the direct object of a transitive verb or the surface subject of an unaccusative verb.

Haspelmath (1994) attempts to provide a unified account of these two possibilities on

semantic/thematic grounds, which I have summarized in the rest of this paragraph, using

some of my own terms to explicitly tie it into our discussion. APPs are best understood as

30Either of these examples is grammatical under the very unlikely circumstance of John Mary or Mary John being interpretable as a single constituent (probably a name), but then this constituent is simply a moved Theme argument that originated in direct-object position. 31This situation is very similar to the movement hypothesized to occur with unaccusatives, except that un-accusatives are thought never to have had an EA to begin with.


20

“resultative participles.” An APP modifies a noun that is interpreted as an argument of a

verb whose referent is affected by the action of the verb and hence ends up in a resultant

state (which state is indicated by the participle). The direct objects of transitive verbs and

the surface subjects of unaccusatives are typically precisely these sorts of arguments (Pa-

tients and Themes). By contrast, the referents of unergative subjects, which are often

Agents, are typically unaffected by the verb’s action, and hence a nominal expression re-

ferring to such an Agent cannot be modified by an APP formed from that verb. But why

should the acceptability of modifying a noun with a participle hinge on whether the

noun’s referent is affected, or has undergone a change of state?32 Haspelmath provides an

explanation based on usefulness:

[A] thing cannot always be characterized by means of a state resulting from an event in which it participated. It becomes useful to characterize a thing by means of a resulting state only if the previous event affected or changed the thing somehow. […] *[T]he danced boy (‘the boy who danced’) is unacceptable because the boy is not (normally) as a result of his dancing in a new state that would serve to characterize him. (Haspelmath (1994), p. 159, em-phasis mine)

This makes sense, and Haspelmath is right to point out the strong thematic similarity be-

tween direct objects and unaccusative subjects, as he does more explicitly in the part of

the quoted passage that I have omitted. However, his account is vulnerable to a problem.

In

(45) *I just reply with my memorized answers. (from http://www.psychforums.com/avoidant-personality/topic46830.html)33

answers is coreferent with the IA of memorize, but it is implausible to propose that the

answers have undergone a change of state owing to the memorization. If anything, as

32In the following discussion, I will use the notions of affectedness and having undergone a change of state interchangeably. 33The inspiration to find an example involving memorize came from Williams (1997), p. 596.


21

pointed out by Williams (1997), the change of state is undergone by the memorizer (p.

596).

Although Haspelmath could probably accommodate this difficulty, it does seem that

the standard generative account of passivization is better equipped to deal with it than

Haspelmath’s proposal, at least in the latter’s present form. This is because the generative

account treats passivization as arising from a conspiracy of several formal processes,

none of which require the putative underlying direct object to be affected by the verb’s

action.

In addition, Haspelmath’s proposal makes no attempt to solve the formal problem

that arises when we try to extend the standard generative account of passivization to “ac-

tively paraphrasable” APPs. This is not a problem if the argument is considered on its

own terms, but if we assume that the generative account of passivization is worth keeping

(as I will do here), then we will be motivated to continue seeking a solution to the APP

problem.

Burzio’s account

A relevant clue is provided by Burzio (1986) (henceforth “Burzio”), in a discussion

of Italian reduced relatives such as

(46) *un ragazzo arrivato poco fa (based on Burzio *a guy arrived a.little.while ago (40b), p. 194) *‘a guy who arrived a little while ago’

This example contains the (probably not adjectival) past participle arrivato, which has an

active, not a passive, paraphrase: having arrived, not *having been arrived. Burzio draws


22

an interesting parallel between (46) and cases of impersonal passivization such as the fol-

lowing:34

(47) *French (Burzio (1986), (37a), p. 192) *Il sera parlé de vous par tout le monde. *it will.be talked about you by all the world *‘You will be talked about by everyone.’

(48) *Dutch (ibid., (38a), p. 192) *Er wordt hier door de jonge lui veel gedanst. *there is here by the young people a.lot danced *‘The young people dance a lot here.’

(49) *German (Quesada (1997), (1), p. 45) *Es wurde getanzt. *it became danced *‘There was dancing. Dancing took place.’

(50) *Classical Latin (Caesar, B. G. 7.84, cited in Lewis & Short (1879), “pugnō”) *pugnātur ūnō tempore omnibus locīs… *fight.3.SG.PRS.IND.PASS one.ABL time.ABL all.ABL places.ABL *lit. ‘It is fought in all places at one time…’

*id. ‘There is fighting on all sides at once…’ (cf. McDevitte & Bohn (1869))

(51) *P’urhépecha35 (Chamoreau (2007), (27b), p. 138)36 *waɽa -na -ʃa -ti *dance -PASS -PROG -IND+3 *lit. ‘It is being danced.’

*id. ‘One is dancing. People are dancing.’ Thus far, we have ascribed to the passive morpheme the ability to do two things:

(52) “absorb” the verb’s ability to assign accusative Case (53) internalize its EA

34Examples (47) and (49) have been slightly modified. I have also added some examples not present in Burzio. 35In the P’urhépecha examples in this paper, I have respected the transcription in my sources rather than attempting to standardize it. Some of these sources (such as the one that provided example (51)) use IPA; others use P’urhépecha orthography. A standardized writing system for P’urhépecha, which uses the Ro-man alphabet, was developed in 1979 by the Centro de Cooperación Regional para la Educación de Adultos en América Latina y el Caribe (CREFAL, the Center for Regional Cooperation for Adult Education in Latin America and the Caribbean) (Javier Mellápeti Cuiriz, p.c.; Velázquez Pahuamba et al. (1995)), but it is not yet used by all literate P’urhépecha speakers. Some speakers are literate only in Spanish and hence use an ad hoc orthography for P’urhépecha. 36This example has been slightly modified.


23

Burzio’s argument is as follows.37 If, in order to attach to a verb, the passive morpheme

must be able to do both (52) and (53), then it should only be able to attach when the verb

has both a direct object (to perform the operation in (52)) and an EA (to perform the op-

eration in (53)). Unaccusatives have a direct object (underlyingly) but no EA, so the pas-

sive morpheme, when attaching to an unaccusative, can perform (52) but not (53). Con-

versely, passivizable intransitives such as those in (47-51)38 have an EA39 but no direct

object, so the passive morpheme, when attaching to them, can perform (53) but not (52).

Burzio concludes that, although (52) and (53) are both operations associated with the pas-

sive morpheme, different languages may choose to make either operation optional, thus

permitting APPs based on unaccusatives (if (53) is optional) and passivized unergatives

(if (52) is optional). These crosslinguistic differences should presumably be parameter-

ized.40

To clarify Burzio’s argument even further, I will briefly sketch how it presumably

operates in (46) and (47-51).

Impersonal passive

In, for instance, the impersonal passive (50), the passive morpheme attaches to the

stem of the Latin verb pugnāre ‘to fight’ to produce pugnātur (which is also inflected for

37I have omitted some detail in my summary of this argument. In particular, I have dealt only with whether a passivized verb has a nominal complement, whereas Burzio describes in more detail the “require[ment] that either there be an NP in the complement structure of the past participle that can move into subject posi-tion, or that there be an argument, NP or S, that can be linked with a pleonastic element” (pp. 197-198). 38Parlé in (47) is intransitive in that it presumably does not have an expressed or unexpressed nominal IA in that sentence. 39The verbs in (47-51) are predicted to be unergative. Therefore, under the UH, their subjects (when they are in the active voice) should be true EAs, not moved IAs. 40In allowing examples such as (46) with arrivato, Burzio’s account appears to predict that some languages should allow unaccusatives to passivize in their finite forms, not just as participles, yielding sentences such as ‘It was fallen by the leaf’. This prediction is borne out, as discussed under “Passivizability.” I thank Ed-win Williams for helping me clarify this point.


24

several other grammatical features). (53) says that the passive morpheme internalizes the

verb’s EA, and sure enough, this argument does not surface in subject position (in fact, in

this example it is not expressed at all). (52) says that the passive morpheme also “ab-

sorbs” the accusative case that the verb assigns. Pugnāre does not take an accusative di-

rect object, but (52) is optional in Latin, so the passive morpheme does not have to

“worry” about depriving the verb of an accusative-case–assigning ability that it does not

have, and the utterance is well formed. It should be easy to give an analogous account for

French, Dutch, German, and P’urhépecha (see (47-49) and (51)), with the qualifications

that the impersonal passive in French is “of limited productivity” (Burzio, p. 192) and

that the ability of P’urhépecha to express internalized EAs overtly is apparently subject to

diachronic variation and synchronic regional variation (Chamoreau (2007), p. 136).

“Actively paraphrasable” past participles of unaccusatives

In (46), the passive morpheme attaches to the stem of the Italian unaccusative arri-

vare ‘to arrive’ to produce arrivato. Burzio’s formulation of (52) (see fn. 37) states that

the verb being passivized must have a nominal complement, and arrivare does, underly-

ingly. (53) says that the passive morpheme internalizes the verb’s EA. Arrivare has no

EA, but because (53) is optional in Italian, the passive morpheme does not have to

“worry” about internalizing an EA that does not exist, and the utterance is well formed.

As we have seen, on Burzio’s account, all passive-looking participles do involve the

passive morpheme, regardless of whether they have passive or active paraphrases.

Burzio’s parametric explanation appears to account for the facts. Of course, further

questions can be asked about it. Prof. Edwin Williams (p.c.) tells me that what appears to


25

be common to passives crosslinguistically is the internalization of the verb’s EA. But if

this is sometimes optional, as claimed in Burzio’s explanation for (46), then one wonders

whether all passives can be said to share anything at all. However, I will not pursue this

issue here. Instead, having laid out the difference between unergatives and unaccusatives

with regard to APPs, and explored some of the theoretical issues surrounding this differ-

ence, I will proceed to the APP data from P’urhépecha.

P’urhépecha passive-looking participles as an unaccusative diagnostic

Let us take the ability to form “actively paraphrasable” passive-looking participles as

diagnostic of unaccusativity (but see fn. 27 for a problem with this assumption). If the

unergative/unaccusative distinction exists in P’urhépecha, then P’urhépecha verbs pre-

dicted to be unaccusative should form “actively paraphrasable” past participles, whereas

those predicted to be unergative should not.41 As we will see shortly, this prediction ap-

pears to be borne out.

It is first necessary to determine what P’urhépecha morphemes are used to form pas-

sive participles. The clearest one is -kata, which forms what Wares (1974) (henceforth

“Wares”) calls the past participle. Its use may be illustrated with the transitive verb atá-ni

‘to hit, strike’:42

(54) *atá -kata (adapted from Wares, p. 95) *strike -PST.PART.PASS *‘struck, stricken’

41Actually, P’urhépecha—like Ancient Greek but unlike English and Spanish—has a past active participle (Wares), so one might perhaps expect predicted unaccusatives to form these (just like transitives and pre-dicted unergatives) instead of “actively paraphrasable” passive-looking participles. As we are about to see, however, this is not the case. 42-ni marks the infinitive.


26

Participles in -kata can also be used nominally (a situation familiar from languages such

as Spanish, Latin, and Ancient Greek),43 as in the following example from the transitive

verb tʼiré-ni44 ‘to eat’:

(55) *tʼiré -kata (adapted from Foster (1969), p. 85, §632) *eat -PST.PART.PASS *‘food eaten’

Foster (1969) (henceforth “Foster”) treats another suffix, -ta, as an allomorph of -kata,

stating that the two are in complementary distribution, the former occurring after the

morphemes -kwaṛe ‘by oneself, alone, REFL’, -pʼera ‘each other, mutually, together’, -a

(meaning undetermined), and -n (meaning undetermined). However, she states that -ta

“may prove to be a separate morpheme” (p. 85, §632). Lastly, Foster treats the nominal-

izer -kwa (as in (56)) as a present/future passive participial suffix, as in

(56) *tʼiré -kwa (adapted from Foster, p. 85, §632) *eat -NONPST.PART.PASS *‘food to eat’

although the discussion of P’urhépecha participles in Wares does not mention it at all.

Now that we are familiar with the passive participial suffixes in P’urhépecha, we can

examine the data. The glosses of most of the participles given by Foster correspond to

their nominal uses. Let us begin with verbs predicted to be unaccusative:

43Wares points out, however, that “-kata is far from being the most common nominalizing suffix.” 44Both in Foster’s transcription and in standard P’urhépecha orthography (see fn. 35), an apostrophe follow-ing a consonant indicates that it is aspirated.


27

(57) Verb stem

Meaning Participial derivatives

Meaning

a. čará- ‘explode’ (intrans.)

čará- kata ‘something that exploded’

b. čará- kwa ‘one who explodes’ c. apíra-45 ‘become

snagged or obstructed’

apíra-kata ‘thing which always has been snagged’

d. apíra-kwa (‘thing on which one becomes snagged or obstructed’)

e. uekorhe- ‘fall’ uekorhe-kata

‘fallen’

(Examples (a-d) are from Foster, p. 85, §632. Example (e) is from Speaker 2.46)

As we can see, the nominalized participles čará-kata and čará-kwa in (57a-b) have ac-

tive paraphrases: ‘something that exploded’ and ‘one who explodes’. One might initially

object that these meanings are close enough to ‘something that has been exploded’ and

‘one who is exploded’ respectively that perhaps the latter are more accurate glosses and

these are true passive participles. However, Foster specifically indicates that the stem

čará- is intransitive (she actually glosses it as ‘to explode self’). The stem apíra- in (57c-

d) has a passive gloss in English (‘become snagged or obstructed’), but it is just an in-

transitive stem in P’urhépecha (Foster, p. 85, §632), not a morphological passive: the

synthetic passive is marked by suffixing -na or -ŋa to the stem, depending on the dialect

(Chamoreau (2007)). Once we know that apíra- has a passive gloss in English, we realize

that ‘thing which always has been snagged’ ((57c)) is precisely the sort of meaning we

expect for a nominalized participle from a predicted unaccusative like apíra-: an essen-

45Foster (p. 131, §781) segments the infinitive of this verb as a-pi-ra-ni and indicates that it alternates with a-pi-kwaṛe-ni and a-pi-ra-kwaṛe-ni. That the -ra in particular alternates with -kwaṛe ‘by oneself, alone, REFL’ suggests that it is the middle marker -ra (Nava & Maldonado (2002), p. 471). It is not clear from Foster what the a- and -pi mean. 46The speakers’ orthography suggests that they speak different dialects. Speaker 1 is from la Cañada de los Once Pueblos (the Gully of the Eleven Towns) and Speaker 2 is from Santa Fe de la Laguna, both in Michoacán. As we will see in the next section, however, both speakers behaved similarly with respect to SV and VS orders.


28

tially active paraphrase (the passive part been snagged corresponds to the meaning of the

verb; a true passive paraphrase would be *thing which always has been been snagged).

Apíra-kwa in (57d) has an idiosyncratic meaning: ‘thing on which one becomes snagged

or obstructed’, rather than the expected ‘{one who / thing which} {becomes / is} snagged

or obstructed’. This word is therefore not evidence for the unaccusative/unergative dis-

tinction in P’urhépecha, unlike the three other nominalized participles in (57). Lastly, the

predicted unaccusative stem uekorhe- acts precisely as expected: its passive-looking past

participle, uekorhe-kata, has the expected active paraphrase ‘fallen’, i.e., ‘having

fallen’.

Of the nominalized participles formed from predicted unaccusatives that I have, the

ones in in (57a-c, e) are the strongest evidence for the existence of split intransitivity in

P’urhépecha. Before moving on to a participial formation from a predicted unergative, I

will present participial formations from two other predicted unaccusatives. These forms

may constitute additional evidence of split intransitivity, but this is only a speculation. To

begin, consider the following:

(58) Verb stem Meaning Participial derivatives

Meaning (Foster, p. 85, §632)

cá- ‘heat’ (intrans.) cá-n-ta47 ‘sun, heat’

47In Foster’s transcription, c = [ts]. In P’urhépecha orthography (see fn. 35), this sound is standardly spelled <ts>. In addition, Foster’s transcriptions are all phonemic. A rule voicing a plosive after a homorganic na-sal (Wares, p. 97) causes the sequence /nt/ in cá-n-ta to be realized as [nd]. The standard orthography does not respect the allophony between voiced and voiceless plosives, using a different letter for each member of each pair. However, voiced and voiceless plosives are not in a relationship of strict allophony in every stra-tum of the lexicon: voiced plosives not preceded by nasals may be found in Spanish loanwords such as the first names Benjaminu (< Benjamín), Dalia (< Dalia), and Giiermu (< Guillermo) (Velázquez Pahuamba et al. (1995)). In addition, Foster (p. 99, §720.1) gives the place name siguncani ‘Tzintzuntzan’, which she describes as “aberrant” by virtue of containing a [g] not preceded by a nasal. The -n in cá-n-ta appears to be the morpheme that Foster described as having an undetermined meaning (p. 107, §743).


29

It is conceivable, though by no means certain, that cá-n-ta in (58), in the sense ‘sun’,

could literally mean, or originally have meant, ‘one having heated’ (where ‘heat’ is to be

interpreted as an unaccusative intransitive, as in the more idiomatic heat up). If this is the

case, then cá-n-ta has the active paraphrase expected for a nominalized participle derived

from a predicted unaccusative—but this is obscured by the fact that this meaning has de-

veloped, or perhaps been replaced by, the more specific meaning ‘sun’, in an instance of

semantic narrowing. However, as mentioned, this analysis of cá-n-ta remains entirely

speculative; it also does not straightforwardly extend to the word’s other meaning, ‘heat’.

Our last two examples of participial forms based on predicted unaccusatives are the

following:

(59) *xí úškani ášpekwa. / …ášpekata. (ibid., p. 85, §632) *xí ú -š -Ø -ka =ni48 *I do -PFV -PRS -IND+1 =1.SG.SUBJ

(58) *á -š -pe -kwa. / …-kata. *? -? -PREDMID49 -NONPST.PART.PASS / …-PST.PART.PASS ........be good........50

*‘I did it well.’ / ‘I did it the best.’ The glosses of the rest of Foster’s examples of participial formations in -kwa and -kata

provide abundant evidence that these forms can be used nominally (cf. (55-56)). Suppose

that ášpe-kwa and ášpe-kata in the two versions of (59) are actually nominal, despite 48An equals sign = separates a clitic from its host. The literal gloss is mine. 49Foster calls -pe an “attributional suffix,” glosses it as ‘of that quality’, and indicates that it can occur with “[c]lass 6 verb stems,” which have meanings that English would assign to “adjectives of inherent quality,” such as good, thin, red, soft, and lazy (p. 107, §745). Nava & Maldonado (2002) analyze it as a type of middle marker whose function is “attributive predication,” and note that it can appear in predicates describ-ing texture, shape, consistency, and color. Their example (15) indicates that it has an allomorph -pi. That this -pe is in fact present in ášpekwa is confirmed by Foster’s mention of ášpe-ni ‘to be or taste good’ (given as ášpʼeni, apparently an error) in a context where she is clearly talking about this -pe (p. 113, §753.2). 50The stem ášpe- means ‘be or taste good’ (Foster, p. 85, §632; p. 113, §753.2). Foster analyzes it as inter-nally complex, and I have respected her morpheme divisions in (59), but I have been unable to ascertain what its parts mean (aside from -pe, on which see the previous footnote).


30

being used adverbially in these sentences (like the English last week and Mondays). If

this is the case, then it is possible that the two versions of (59) literally mean ‘I did [a

thing being good]’ and ‘I did [a thing having been good]’ respectively. That the passive-

looking participles ášpe-kwa and ášpe-kata would have these active paraphrases would

be expected, because the verb stem ášpe- ‘be or taste good’ is predicted to be unaccusa-

tive: its argument is neither an Agent nor an Experiencer.51 The passive paraphrases, *a

thing being been good and *a thing having been been good, would be perplexing.

To sum up the P’urhépecha data so far, passive-looking participles based on pre-

dicted unaccusatives have either active paraphrases—as predicted by the unaccusative

diagnostic involving passive-looking participles—or idiosyncratic paraphrases. In a few

cases ((58-59)) I have suggested that the idiosyncratic meanings may be semantic exten-

sions of the expected active paraphrases, but I reiterate that these suggestions are purely

conjectural.

The passive participial suffixes -kata and -kwa can attach not only to predicted un-

accusatives but also to predicted unergatives, such as the verb stem ánčekwaṛe- ‘work’

in (60). The passive-looking–participle diagnostic for unaccusativity predicts that parti-

cipial formations from unergatives should not have active paraphrases (these being re-

served for unaccusative-based participles), and this prediction is borne out:

51Alexiadou, Anagnostopoulou, & Everaert (2004) note that verbs corresponding to adjectives in English, such as those “describing size, shapes, weights, colours, smells,” tend to be unaccusative (p. 12).


31

(60) *ánčekwaṛeta / ánčekwaṛekwa (ibid., p. 85, §632) *a -nče -kwaṛe -ta / …-kwa *? -LOCREPL52 -by.oneself -PST.PART.PASS / …-NONPST.PART.PASS *.................work................. *‘work done’ / ‘work to be done’

The nominalized participles in (60) do not have active paraphrases in the relevant sense,

which would have been ‘one who has worked’ and ‘one who works’ respectively.

In summary, all the passive-looking participial forms we have examined appear to be

consistent with the predictions of the passive-looking–participle diagnostic for unaccusa-

tivity.53

B. Subject-verb order

The UH has also been invoked to explain certain crosslinguistically attested effects

in the order of subject and verb. For instance, Spanish, in declarative clauses, exhibits

quite generally an option that been dubbed free subject inversion. This means that these

clauses may display not only SV but also VS order:54

(61) a. Una mujer gritó. b. Gritó una mujer. (Lozano (2004), a woman shouted shouted a woman (1), p. 147) ‘A woman shouted.’ ‘A woman shouted.’ 52A locative replacive in P’urhépecha is a suffix that appears instead of a locative suffix and does not obvi-ously have a locative meaning synchronically, though it may be phonologically identical to a locative suf-fix. Probably some locative replacives come from locative suffixes historically but lost the locative mean-ing over time (Foster, pp. 98-99, §720). 53Foster also gives xuṛí-a-ta ‘day, sun’ (where the -a is presumably the morpheme whose meaning she claimed was unknown (p. 107, §743)), which comes from the stem xuṛía- ‘to be day’. If this is a typical weather verb (one with no real arguments), then xuṛí-a-ta may have interesting implications for the param-eterization of what the passive morpheme can attach to (cf. Burzio’s account of impersonal passivization and unaccusative past participles like arrivato). However, I have not explored this issue. 54If an object is present and there is no clitic doubling, the possible orders are (generally) SVO, VSO, and VOS. Because Spanish is focus-final, VOS necessarily focuses the subject (Zubizarreta (1998), p. 125). (It cannot focus any greater unit than that—in other words, focus projection above the level of the subject is impossible—as OS is not a constituent.) The discussion in the text will be restricted to sentences that have only a verb and a subject, where by subject I mean not a constituent in any particular structural position but rather a constituent that agrees with the verb in person and number and bears nominative Case.


32

(62) a. Un vecino vino. b. Vino un vecino. (ibid., (2), p. 147) a neighbor came came a neighbor ‘A neighbor came.’ ‘A neighbor came.’55

However, the judgments on these sentences change if they are used as answers to a ques-

tion that induces a pragmatically neutral context.56 Such a context can be induced by ask-

ing a general question, with the expectation that no part of it will serve as a discourse an-

tecedent for any part of the answer. The following data are from Lozano (2004); I do not

fully agree with the judgments given, as I will explain below.

(63) A: ‘What happened last night in the street?’ B: a. ??Una mujer gritó. b. ??Gritó una mujer. ??a woman shouted ??shouted a woman ??‘A woman shouted.’ ??‘A woman shouted.’ (ibid., (3bii,cii), pp. 147-148) (64) A: ‘What happened last night at the party?’ B: a. ??La policía vino. b. ??Vino la policía. ??the police came ??came the police ??‘The police showed up.’ ??‘The police showed up.’ (ibid., (4bii,cii), p. 148) Facts analogous to (63-64) also hold for Modern Greek:57

(65) A: ‘What happened last night in the street?’ B: a. ??mia ginaika fonaxe. b. ??fonaxe mia ginaika. ??a woman shouted ??shouted a woman ??‘A woman shouted.’ ??‘A woman shouted.’ (ibid., (3biii,ciii), pp. 147-148)58

55I have slightly modified this example. 56A pragmatically neutral context is one in which no part of the utterance has any special pragmatic value (i.e., information-structural status)—such as topichood, focushood, or givenness—in contradistinction to any other part. In other words, the entirety of a pragmatically neutral utterance is new information—a situa-tion also known as broad-scope focus—but it has no internal contrasts with respect to topicalization, focus-ing, or givenness.57That these subject-verb–order paradigms exist in Greek and “Romance” is noted in Merchant (handout). 58Note that this example uses an orthographic transliteration and not IPA. Its pronunciation may therefore be counterintuitive.


33

(66) A: ‘What happened last night at the party?’ B: a. ??i astinomia eftase. b. ??eftase i astinomia. ??the police arrived ??arrived the police ??‘The police arrived.’ ??‘The police arrived.’ (ibid., (4biii,ciii), p. 148) First, a note on the judgments. Although I cannot judge the Greek sentences, I disagree

with Lozano’s judgment that (63Bb) Gritó una mujer is significantly more questionable

than (63Ba) Una mujer gritó. To my ear, they are both felicitous in the context given (al-

though one order may perhaps be more common than the other).59

Nevertheless, both Lozano’s judgments and mine reveal the same basic important

facts about Spanish subject-verb order in pragmatically neutral contexts. With the verb

gritar ‘to shout’, SV order is clearly preferred to VS (for Lozano), or there is no particu-

lar preference and both orders are equally acceptable (for me). However, with the verb

venir ‘to come’,60 SV order is significantly degraded compared to VS. As we have seen,

similar facts appear to hold in Greek. And data from Shlonsky (1987) (cited in Merchant

(handout)) show that similar contrasts exist in Hebrew, where the verbs in (67-70) permit

VS order, but this same order in (71) is noticeably worse than SV:61

(67) ??kayam- im anašim še= mesugalim li- rcoax bišvil kesef. ??exist- PL people that= capable to- murder for money ??‘There exist people capable of murdering for money.’ (Shlonsky (1987), (21b), p. 142)

59My qualifications for making this judgment are as follows: I am a fluent native speaker of Mexican Span-ish, although my Spanish is not quite as good, or complete, as my English. However, two other speakers of Mexican Spanish (from Mexico City) with whom I consulted also found both orders felicitous in the con-text given. Considering that Lozano has held several university positions in Spain, this could conceivably be a dialectal difference. 60Lozano glosses vino as ‘arrived’ and also gives ‘The police arrived’ as the idiomatic translation for both versions of (64B) (his (4bii) and (4cii)). I have glossed vino as ‘came’ because, in my mind, the translation equivalent of venir in English is come, but my idiomatic translation for the entire utterance is ‘The police showed up’ because this is what strikes me as most idiomatic in the context given—i.e., most pragmatically equivalent to (64Bb) Vino la policía. 61I have slightly modified these examples.


34

(68) ??xala ’aliya b= a= temperatura. ??came.about increase in= the= temperature ??‘The temperature has risen.’ (ibid., (21e), p. 142)

(69) ??parac viku’ax so’er. ??broke.out argument stormy ??‘A stormy argument broke out.’ (ibid., (22c), p. 143)

(70) ??higi’a doar.62 (ibid., (22d), p. 143) ??arrived mail ??‘Mail has arrived.’ (71) ??racu / halxu / ca’adu / kipcu šloša yeladim le= bet ha= sefer. ??ran walked marched hopped three children to= house the= book ??‘Three children ran/walked/marched/hopped to school.’ (ibid., (31), p. 147)...

VS order is also well-formed in passives:63

(72) ??šulma agrat televiziya. (ibid., (32c), p. 148) ??was.paid tax television ??‘A television tax has been paid.’ (73) ??ne’ecru šloša xayalim b= a= hafgana. ??were.arrested three soldiers in= the= demonstration ??‘Three soldiers were arrested at the demonstration.’64 (Merchant (handout), (24))

These data can be explained under the UH as follows. The (nonpassive) Greek and He-

brew verbs that allow postverbal subjects ((66Bb, 67-70)) do so because these subjects

are actually in direct-object position, a situation that is possible because these verbs are

unaccusative (which is also predicted on semantic grounds).65 VS order is much more

62Shlonsky (1987) notes (p. 143) that examples (69) and (70) are clearly degraded if the tense is changed from past to present. He explains: “The degradation is due to the atten[u]ation of the presentational aspect of these verbs when they appear in the present tense. The [present-tense versions] denote more of a habit-ual, continuous state of affairs, rather than a novel occur[r]ence.” 63Shlonsky (1987) notes that VS in passives “is far less acceptable” when the Agent argument is overtly expressed. See his pp. 148-49 for discussion. 64Merchant (handout) and Reinhart & Siloni (MS, 2003) ((17b), p. 8) attribute this example to Shlonsky (1987), but I cannot find it within this last work. 65Shlonsky (1987) claims (p. 144) that VS order in Hebrew (without a clause-initial “trigger” for inversion) is well formed with some intransitives that are not unaccusative. As far as I can tell, however, the verbs in


35

questionable with the other Greek and Hebrew verbs ((65Bb, 71)) because they are uner-

gative, so there is not an obvious reason why their subjects should be allowed to follow

them. Likewise, the Spanish verb that strongly preferred a postverbal subject ((64B)) is

also unaccusative, whereas the other one ((63B)) is unergative, as also predicted on se-

mantic grounds. The reason that I did not strongly prefer a preverbal subject with the

unergative—instead finding both orders felicitous in context—is that the position of the

subject in Spanish is quite flexible, as partly captured by the aforementioned descriptive

term free subject inversion and shown in (61-62).

The well-formedness of VS order with Hebrew passives ((72-73)) is certainly well

motivated, as unaccusatives and passives are thought to appear in almost identical syntac-

tic configurations. Therefore, whatever explanation we give for VS order in one case

should naturally extend to the other.

The problem with postverbal unaccusative subjects

The word order of the languages that we have been considering in this section has a

measure of strictness. In such languages, postverbal subjects of unaccusatives and pas-

sives present a serious problem for the UH and the generative account of passivization.

According to these hypotheses, the entire reason that the underlying direct objects of un-

accusatives and passives must normally move to the clausal subject position in languages

like English is that they cannot receive Case in their base position (although they would

normally receive accusative in that same position if the verb were transitive or a valency-

all the relevant examples (his (21-24)) are predicted to be unaccusative. But if he is right, then the Hebrew data discussed in the text may well have to be explained by something other than the UH.


36

augmented unergative). How, then, can the direct objects of unaccusatives and passives

in Spanish, Greek, and Hebrew get away with remaining in situ?

If we continue to hold the widespread generative assumption that all normal nominal

expressions must receive Case, we are forced to the conclusion that postverbal unaccusa-

tive arguments in these languages are somehow able to receive Case without appearing to

move, whereas this is not true in English.66 But how do they receive Case?

Belletti’s account

Belletti (1988) argues that unaccusatives and passives, though unable to assign accu-

sative Case, can optionally assign a different Case, which she calls partitive. In some lan-

guages, such as Finnish, partitive Case has a unique morphological realization distinct

from that of the other cases. On Belletti’s account, partitive Case also exists in languages

where it is always realized morphologically exactly like some other Case. It is interpreted

like the English lexical quantifier some, and accordingly is only compatible with indefi-

nites. Therefore, in the following Italian sentence:67

(74) *È arrivato il ragazzo. (Belletti (1988), (12b), p. 7) *is arrived the boy *‘The boy arrived.’

66With the exception of marked syntactic contexts such as the there-inversion construction, as in xxx(xi) *There arrived three men. 67I have slightly modified this example.


37

the postverbal unaccusative subject il ragazzo cannot be assigned partitive Case in situ

because it is definite, so (74) must be considered an instance of free inversion, which Bel-

letti analyzes as right-adjunction of the subject to VP:68

(75)

(ibid., (45), p. 19)

Belletti argues (p. 19) that, in the configuration in (75), I can assign nominative to the

VP-adjoined NP under government; the higher VP node is not a barrier to government,

because only categories count as barriers, whereas the higher VP is a segment. By

contrast, if the unaccusative argument is indefinite, it can remain in its base position and

receive partitive from the verb.69

As noted above, on Belletti’s account, the only Case that can be assigned by

unaccusative and passive verbs is partitive. Belletti argues that this account predicts the

Definiteness Effect that arises with unmoved direct objects of unaccusatives in English,

French, German, and Italian. The Definiteness Effect is a requirement that a particular

nominal expression be indefinite rather than definite.

68(75), which is taken from Belletti, omits the VP-internal base position of the unaccusative argument, which is the complement position of V. The superscripts indicate the relation between expletive and postverbal NP (Belletti (1988), fn. 37). 69In this scenario, I cannot assign the unaccusative argument nominative under government, because the category VP is a barrier to government. However, as mentioned in the text, the argument can receive Case in another way—it is assigned partitive by the verb—so the Case Filter is complied with and the utterance is well formed.


38

Case transmission

Belletti’s hypothesis stands in contrast to the earlier idea that postverbal unaccusative

arguments receive nominative Case by Case transmission from the clausal subject

position. On this view—attributed in Shlonsky (1987) to Burzio (1986), Chomsky (1981),

and many other researchers—nominative is transmitted through a chain between the

postverbal argument and an expletive in the clausal subject position. This expletive is

overt in such languages as English (it), French (il), and German (es), but covert in partly

or fully pro-drop languages such as Spanish, Italian, Modern Greek, and Hebrew, and its

function is precisely to transmit Case (Shlonsky (1987), p. 16). Belletti’s proposal

requires her to conclude that Case transmission does not exist. This is because, if

unaccusative arguments could receive nominative in situ by Case transmission, then her

account of the Definiteness Effect would lose all predictive power, because it would no

longer be true that unmoved unaccusative arguments could only receive partitive and

hence had to be indefinite. However, Belletti’s account still posits the existence of a

“relation”—indicated by superscripts in (75)—between the expletive in subject position

and the postverbal argument (whether it is a free-inverted unergative subject, an in situ

unaccusative argument, or a free-inverted unaccusative argument); this relation transmits

to the postverbal argument sometimes the verb’s external θ-role and sometimes

agreement features (see Belletti (1988), fn. 43, for the details).

Eguzkitza & Kaiser’s account

Eguzkitza & Kaiser (1999) (henceforth E&K) argue on empirical and conceptual

grounds, contra Belletti, that partitive Case (qua abstract Case in languages that do not


39

show it morphologically) does not exist. A summary of their arguments is beyond the

scope of this paper; for our purposes it will suffice to present their proposal, which is as

follows. Inserted expletives (as opposed to quasiargumental ones (Chomsky (1981), p.

325, cited in E&K) do not receive Case. Hence Case transmission does not exist. Because

neither Case transmission nor partitive Case exists, every postverbal unaccusative

argument has raised from its base position and right-adjoined to VP, where it is assigned

nominative directly, as in (75) from Belletti (1988). In summary, the main differences we

have noted between Belletti’s proposal and E&K’s are that, according to the latter, a)

abstract partitive Case does not exist, and b) a postverbal unaccusative argument always

right-adjoins to VP and receives nominative directly from I—not only when it is definite

and hence cannot receive “partitive” from the verb in its base position.

As we have seen, both Belletti and E&K argue that at least some postverbal

unaccusative arguments have raised and right-adjoined to VP. It seems to me, though,

that the simplest assumption about such an argument is that it has not moved but is

instead in its base position as the complement of V.70 Of course, we can only maintain

this assumption if we can give an account of how the argument gets Case. But theoretical

tools that have become increasingly prominent in generative grammar since the

appearance of Belletti (1988) and E&K may well make this possible.

70For those who subscribe to Kayne’s (1994) Antisymmetry hypothesis, this theoretical position constitutes another reason to reject the hypothesis that some or all postverbal unaccusative arguments have right-adjoined to VP. I will not take a stance on Antisymmetry here, however.


40

How to assign unaccusative arguments Case without moving them overtly

One such tool is covert movement (aka LF-movement or LF-raising), proposed to

account for interpretive wh-island–like effects in wh-in-situ languages such as Mandarin

(Huang (1982)) and for the interpretive difference between surface scope and inverse

scope in languages like English (May (1977; 1985)). Chomsky (1995) proposed a

revision to our understanding of the traditional distinction between overt and covert

movement, arguing that movement targets features, not phrases. (The traditional rule

Move α was hence renamed Move F.) This account invokes the notion of feature

strength: a strong feature, when moved, pied-pipes a phrase dominating it, resulting in

“overt” movement, whereas a weak feature does not pied-pipe a phrase, producing

“covert” movement. Chomsky (2000; 2001) proposes yet a different account, according

to which features can be checked71 without movement by an operation called Agree, in

which, within certain structural configurations, a “probe” finds and Agrees with a

“goal.”72 And Bobaljik (2002), using evidence from Scandinavian object shift and

English expletive insertion, argues for a model of grammatical organization he calls

Single-Output Syntax. In this model, there is no overt and covert movement qua

movement before and after Spellout. There is just movement, but LF and PF can each

independently “decide” which copy of a moved phrase—the original or the moved

copy—to “privilege.” (PF-privileging is pronunciation; LF-privileging is interpretation.)

Mismatches between interpretation and surface form thus arise when PF and LF “choose”

to privilege different copies.

71The need to perform syntactic movement (as opposed to movement driven by morphological, prosodic, or other phonological requirements) has long been implemented using checking theory, according to which morphemes and higher levels of structure bear features that need to be “checked” against one another. 72My understanding of these facts about Chomsky’s successive accounts of the phenomena first described by appealing to covert movement was clarified by Baker (2002).


41

All four of the mechanisms I have just reviewed—covert movement, feature

movement (Move F), Agree, and Single-Output Syntax—were proposed to account for

phenomena in which it appears (for interpretive reasons) as though an element were

moving, even though it is pronounced in its base position. Any of these mechanisms

seems more than sufficient to deal with the problem of how postverbal unaccusative

arguments receive Case. Furthermore, these mechanisms are independently motivated, as

they have been invoked to explain other mismatches between interpretation and surface

form. By contrast, right-adjunction of unaccusative arguments to VP, as proposed for

some postverbal unaccusative arguments in Belletti (1988) and for all such arguments in

E&K, does not appear to be independently motivated. For this reason, I will assume that

it does not occur, and that postverbal unaccusative arguments are pronounced in their

base position and receive nominative73 by one of the four mechanisms (which we can

think of as “variants of covert movement”) that I have reviewed.

To sum up the discussion so far, we observed that acceptability differences between

SV and VS order in Spanish, Modern Greek, and Hebrew—where V is intransitive—

could be attributed to whether V is unergative or unaccusative. In some contexts in each

of these languages, VS is significantly more acceptable than SV; this is plausibly

ascribable to V in these instances being unaccusative, especially since the verbs in

question are independently predicted to be unaccusative on semantic grounds. Therefore,

73The question of whether Belletti (1988)’s abstract partitive Case exists would take us too far afield. For our purposes, the question is not important. If it does exist, then postverbal unaccusative arguments receive sometimes nominative and sometimes partitive. If it does not, then they always receive nominative. Either way, a postverbal unaccusative argument is always pronounced in its base position as complement of V. (Under feature movement and Agree, it is interpreted there as well. Under covert movement and Single-Output Syntax, the argument’s Case checking occurs in the clausal subject position, assuming that the component in which Case features must be checked is LF, the interpretive component.)


42

the existence of contexts where VS order is much better than SV in P’urhépecha may

indicate that the verbs involved are unaccusative, especially if this is independently

predicted.

Subject-verb order as an unaccusative diagnostic in P’urhépecha

This diagnostic was by no means guaranteed to work in P’urhépecha. First, not every

language with split intransitivity behaves like Spanish, Modern Greek, and Hebrew in

this respect. English has split intransitivity, but outside of marked contexts such as the

there-inversion construction (see fn. 66), the subject in English must generally precede

the verb, regardless of the verb’s unaccusative or unergative status (cf. (3-8)).

Furthermore, the diagnostic as we have been developing it is significantly less valid for

SOV languages than for SVO languages. This is because, if we are dealing with

prototypical intransitive verbs, which have only one argument, either the S position or the

O position will be overtly filled, but not both at once. Consequently, it will be difficult in

an SOV language to tell whether the argument of a predicted unaccusative is in subject or

object position. Now, assuming that [OV] forms a syntactic constituent (a projection of

V—say, VP), it may in fact be possible to answer this question if the sentences being

tested include elements that typically appear on the left edge of VP, such as certain

adverbs or perhaps negation.

Nevertheless, SOV and SVO are not the only possible word orders in P’urhépecha.

As mentioned previously, all six orders of these three constituents are attested, and

although information structure seems to be responsible for some of the variation, much

remains to be understood. This freedom of word order means that, in principle, using


43

subject-verb order as an unaccusative diagnostic in P’urhépecha might have been a

daunting task. Nevertheless, the fact that a basic word order is reported for at least one

region (SVO in the Eastern region (Chamoreau (2007))) made it worth a try, and the

results provide tentative support for the UH.

Method of collection of subject-verb–order data

Whether P’urhépecha subject-verb order provides evidence for the UH is the

question toward which the significant majority of my elicitation questionnaires were

geared. To control for the significant influence of information structure on P’urhépecha

word order, I attempted to create contexts that would make the elicited sentences

pragmatically neutral (cf. the discussion surrounding (63-66)). I did this as follows. Every

subject-verb–order question took the form of a dialogue in Spanish consisting of two

conversational turns. In each dialogue, the first speaker asked a question (usually ‘What

happened?’) likely to make the answer pragmatically neutral. The second speaker in the

dialogue answered the question. The participant in the study was asked to translate the

dialogue from Spanish into P’urhépecha.74 Of course, there are potential problems with

elicitation based on translation; I will address these considerations after presenting the

data.

The response in each dialogue was designed to be as short as possible: the subject

and T′75 often consisted of only a single word each (in the latter case, the verb). This was

to minimize the interference that might arise in more complicated sentences owing to

74In most cases, the participants only had to translate the answer, because the question (‘What happened?’) was the same in every case except a few. 75I borrow the term T′ from X′ theory and ignore the fine structure of TP (= IP). My use of T′ here corre-sponds to the notion of predicate in traditional grammar.


44

considerations such as heaviness or (in theory) scrambling. By minimizing such

interference, I hoped to observe how the predicted unergativity/unaccusativity of a verb

affects (or does not affect) P’urhépecha word order in “core” cases.

The data

The great majority of P’urhépecha subjects were preverbal, and preverbal subjects

were found with both predicted unergatives and predicted unaccusatives. However,

postverbal subjects appeared exclusively with unaccusatives—a pattern reminiscent of the

Spanish, Modern Greek, and Hebrew data discussed above ((63-73)). No VS sentence

produced by one speaker was matched by a VS sentence from the other speaker,

suggesting that VS order is not only not obligatory with predicted unaccusatives in

general but also not obligatory with any particular unaccusative elicited.

First, just for the sake of completeness, I have included the question that began

almost every Spanish dialogue76 ((76a)) and both speakers’ translations of it into

P’urhépecha ((76b-c)). In all the data to follow, the (b) and (c) examples were provided

by Speakers 1 and 2 respectively.77

(76) a. ¿Qué pasó? b. ¿Ampe uski? c. ¿Ambe usïki? ¿what happened ¿what happened ¿what happened

Now let us examine some sentences involving predicted unergatives.78 (The (b) and (c)

examples gloss words, whereas the (d) and (e) examples show the internal structure of

76Including the dialogues used to elicit all the sentences featuring predicted unergatives and unaccusatives that we are about to examine. 77As noted previously, I have respected the speakers’ orthography rather than attempting to standardize it. So as not to waste space, I have omitted the idiomatic translation in cases where it is identical to the literal glosses of (a-c) (modulo punctuation and capitalization)—i.e., in the sentences with predicted unergatives. 78For both predicted unergatives and predicted unaccusatives, only a small fraction of the data elicited are shown.


45

these words—which is considerable, as P’urhépecha is agglutinating.) As mentioned,

these sentences uniformly exhibited SV order:

(77) a. Adriana lloró. b. Adriana wérajti. c. Adriana79 uerásti. Adriana cried Adriana cried Adriana cried ...... d. Adriana wéra -j -Ø -ti. e. Adriana uerá -s -Ø -ti. Adriana cry -PFV -PRS -IND+3 (78) a. Josefina bailó. b. Josefina warhajti. c. Josefina uarhásti. Josefina danced Josefina danced Josefina danced ...... d. Josefina warha -j -Ø -ti. e. Josefina uarhá -s -Ø -ti. Josefina dance -PFV -PRS -IND+3 (79) a. Sara comió. b. Sara tʼirejti. c. Sara tʼiréstia. Sara ate Sara ate Sara ate ...... d. Sara tʼire -j -Ø -ti. e. Sara tʼiré -s -Ø -ti -a.80 Sara eat -PFV -PRS -IND+3 -? (80) a. Isaac se rio. b. Isaac tsípijti. c. Isaac tsïpesti. Isaac laughed Isaac laughed Isaac laughed ...... d. Isaac tsí -pi81 -j -Ø -ti. e. Isaac tsï -pe -s -Ø -ti. Isaac happy -PREDMID -PFV -PRS -IND+3

79Speaker 2 explicitly indicated which words in his/her responses were borrowings from Spanish and which words denote “objects or materials” (objetos o materiales) that are not part of the traditional “indigenous culture” (cultura indígena) of the P’urhépecha. I have indicated the former class of words with broken un-derlining and the latter with a raised ringº. 80I have not been able to determine what this -a is. It shows up in only a handful of sentences from Speaker 2. Perhaps -tia is an allomorph of -ti, or perhaps it represents what Speaker 1 occasionally wrote as …-ti ya, with a ya of whose meaning I am also uncertain. Gilberti (1962 [1559]) defines ia as ‘now, today’. In the sentences from Speaker 1, ya always immediately follows the verb, so perhaps by now it has become a verbal enclitic whose function is, say, to reinforce the verb’s perfective aspect. However, this remains pure speculation. 81On the meaning of -pe / -pi, see fn. 49.


46

(81) a. Pilar gritó. b. Pilari winachajti. c. Pilar jiguákorhesti. Pilar screamed Pilar screamed Pilar screamed ...... d. Pilari wina -cha -j -Ø -ti. Pilar strong? -LOC(throat / inside of mouth)? -PFV -PRS -IND+3 ….. e. Pilar jiguá -korhe -s -Ø -ti. Pilar vomit?? -MID82 -PFV -PRS -IND+3 (82) a. Eduardo cantó. b. Eduardu pirejti. c. Eduardu pirésti. Edward sang Edward sang Edward sang ...... d. Eduardu pire -j -Ø -ti. e. Eduardu piré -s -Ø -ti. Edward sing -PFV -PRS -IND+3

By contrast, VS order was observed with some (though by no means all) unaccusatives.

As mentioned above, every VS sentence elicited was matched by an SV sentence from

the other speaker. What follows is a list of every VS P’urhépecha sentence elicited, along

with the Spanish sentence that prompted it and its SV counterpart from the other speaker.

As can be seen, VS sentences were produced by both speakers.

(83) a. Empezó la canción. b. Pirekwa wénajti ya.83 c. Uénastia pirékua. began the song song began now? began song ‘The song began.’ ‘The song began.’ ‘The song began.’ ...... d. Pire -kwa wéna -j -Ø -ti ya. (SV) sing -NMLZR begin -PFV -PRS -IND+3 now? ….. e. Uéna -s -Ø -ti -a piré -kua. (VS) begin -PFV -PRS -IND+3 -? sing -NMLZR

82In other contexts, this morpheme can be reflexive (Nava & Maldonado (2002), p. 468), but I assume it is a middle here because the verb in which it appears does not seem to have a reflexive meaning. 83On ya, see fn. 80. On -kwa, see the discussion of “P’urhépecha passive-looking participles as an unaccu-sative diagnostic.” Here I have glossed it as NMLZR (nominalizer) because its status as a suffix (allegedly) forming nonpast passive participles (Foster, p. 84, §632) is not relevant to the point at hand.


47

(84) a. Se acabó la fiesta. c.84 Kʼamárastia kʼuinchekua. ended the festival ended festival ‘The festival ended.’ ‘The festival ended.’

…. d. Kʼamá -ra -s -Ø -ti -a kʼui -nche -kua. (VS) end -MID -PFV -PRS -IND+3 -? — -LOCREPL85 -NMLZR celebrate.a.festival (85) a. Se separaron los líquidos. separated the liquids ‘The liquids separated.’ ….. b. Itsïchaksï jarharhperajti. c. Támastia itsïcha. waters separated separated waters ‘The waters separated.’ ‘The liquids separated.’

...... d. Itsï -echa =ksï jarhar -hpera -j -Ø -ti. (SV) water -PL =3.PL.SUBJ separateV -RECIP -PFV -PRS -IND+3 ….. e. Táma -s -Ø -ti -a itsï -echa. (VS) separate -PFV -PRS -IND+3 -? water -PL (86) a. Llegó Dora. b. Janojti ya Dora. c. Dora janosti. arrived Dora arrived now? Dora Dora arrived ‘Dora arrived.’ ‘Dora arrived.’ ‘Dora arrived.’ ….. d. Jano -j -Ø -ti ya Dora. (VS) arrive -PFV -PRS -IND+3 now? Dora ….. e. Dora jano -s -Ø -ti. (SV) Dora arrive -PFV -PRS -IND+3 (87) a. Subió el elevador. went.up the elevator ‘The elevator went up.’ ….. b. Elevador karhantajti ya. c. Karhárasti elevadorº. elevator went.up now? went.up elevator ‘The elevator went up.’ ‘The elevator went up.’

84I do not have Speaker 1’s version of this sentence. This means that it is technically possible that the ar-gument of kʼamara-ni ‘finish, end’ is obligatorily postverbal, but this seems unlikely, given that no other verb that appeared in a VS sentence did so for both speakers. 85On locative replacives, see fn. 52. Foster (p. 101, §720.15) gives no independent meaning for the kʼui- in the stem kʼui-nche- ‘celebrate a festival’. It may be synchronically meaningless, like the morpheme cap- in the English word capable.


48

….. d. Elevador karha -nta -j -Ø -ti ya. (SV) elevator go.up -CENTRIF?86 -PFV -PRS -IND+3 now? ….. e. Karhá -ra -s -Ø -ti elevadorº. (VS) go.up -MID -PFV -PRS -IND+3 elevator

(88) a. Se curó la herida. healed the cut ‘The cut healed.’

…… b. Nimajti ya akwarikata. c. Akuarhikua sesi jarhastinia. healed/

formed.a. scar

now? cut cut well became?

‘The cut healed / formed a scar.’ ‘The cut healed.’ …… d. Nima -j -Ø -ti ya akwari87 -kata.88 (VS) heal / form.a.scar -PFV -PRS -IND+3 now? cut.oneself -NMLZR ….. e. Akuarhi -kua sesi jarha -s -Ø -ti -nia. (SV) cut.oneself -NMLZR well be -PFV -PRS -IND+3 -? (89) a. Aterrizó el avión. b. Avioni antatsiintajti. c. Andatsesti avioniº. landed the plane plane landed landed plane ‘The plane landed.’ ‘The plane landed.’ ‘The plane landed.’ …... d. Avioni anta -tsi -inta89 -j -Ø -ti. (SV) plane ground -LOC(down/ground)? -CENTRIF?? -PFV -PRS -IND+3 …... e. Anda -tse -s -Ø -ti avioniº. (VS) ground -LOC(down/ground)? -PFV -PRS -IND+3 plane (90) a. Se cerró la caja. b. Caja míkwarijti. c. Mikakorhésti jatakua. closed the box box closed closed container ‘The box closed.’ ‘The box closed.’ ‘The container closed.’

86A centrifugal morpheme indicates that the action of the verb is being performed “while going away.” The opposite, a centripetal morpheme, means that the action is being performed “while coming” (Mendoza (2007), p. 162). 87This root could conceivably consist of a root a- plus the morpheme -kuarhi ‘by oneself, alone, REFL’ (transcribed by Foster (p. 131, §781) as -kwaṛe). 88On -kata, see the discussion of “P’urhépecha passive-looking participles as an unaccusative diagnostic.” Here I have glossed it as NMLZR (nominalizer) because its status as a suffix forming past passive participles (Foster, p. 84, §632) is not directly relevant. 89The (very uncertain) gloss for this morpheme is meant to indicate that perhaps it represents the centrifugal suffix described in fn. 86.


49

…... d. Caja mí -kwari -j -Ø -ti. (SV) box close -REFL / by.itself -PFV -PRS -IND+3 …... e. Mika -korhé -s -Ø -ti jata -kua. (VS) close -MID or REFL -PFV -PRS -IND+3 contain -NMLZR

To summarize the data we have just examined ((77-90)): predicted unergatives (including

‘cry’, ‘dance’, ‘eat’, ‘laugh’ ‘scream’, and ‘sing’) invariably appeared in SV sentences,

whereas all the verbs that appeared in VS sentences (‘begin’, ‘end’, ‘separate’, ‘arrive’,

‘go up’, ‘heal’, ‘land’, and ‘close’) are predicted to be unaccusative. Now, it is obvious

that VS order with predicted unaccusatives is not obligatory even in the sort of

pragmatically neutral context I tried to induce, because no predicted unaccusative was

used in a VS sentence by both speakers, and many (not shown) were used in SV

sentences by both. However, despite this nonobligatoriness of VS with predicted

unaccusatives, the picture that emerges from the data above is similar to what we saw in

Spanish (where pragmatically neutral contexts forced VS order with unaccusatives rather

strongly) and particularly in Modern Greek and Hebrew, where, in the contexts we

examined, VS order was perfect with unaccusatives but significantly degraded with

unergatives.

Questions about the subject-verb–order data

The P’urhépecha subject-verb–order data raise several interesting questions. First,

why does P’urhépecha appear to be more similar to Modern Greek and Hebrew than to

Spanish (where, in pragmatically neutral contexts, there is no strong preference between

SV and VS with unergatives90)? As we mentioned (at the beginning of the section

90See the discussion following (66) for how my judgments differed from those given in Lozano (2006) in this matter.


50

“Subject-verb order”; cf. also fn. 54), Spanish has free subject inversion quite generally.91

By contrast, Chamoreau (2007) claims about P’urhépecha (p. 135) that its postverbal

subjects are information-structurally backgrounded, by virtue of providing no important

information; a subject appears postverbally when it is “not necessary to emphasize it.” In

a pragmatically neutral context, however, nothing is backgrounded. Therefore, if

unergative subjects are generated to the left of the verb (say, in SpecVP), then regardless

of whether they raise overtly to a clausal subject position in the (putative) inflectional

layer, there is no reason, all else being equal, that an unergative subject in a pragmatically

neutral sentence should end up after the verb. In other words, if Chamoreau is correct in

saying that postverbal subjects are backgrounded, then, unlike in Spanish, unergative

verbs cannot display free subject inversion in pragmatically neutral sentences.

The P’urhépecha sentences featuring predicted unaccusatives appear to generally be

exceptions to Chamoreau’s generalization that postverbal subjects in this language are

backgrounded. Except in the cases of ‘The cut healed’ ((88)) and perhaps ‘The plane

landed’ ((89)) and maybe ‘The box closed’ ((90)), the subjects of these sentences ((83-

87)) are not predictable from the verbs, so there is no reason that they should be

backgrounded. As we have noted, P’urhépecha information structure is at least partly

expressed syntactically (see the discussion under “P’urhépecha”). These facts involving

predicted unaccusatives with nonbackgrounded postverbal subjects can be reconciled

with Chamoreau’s generalization by positing the following: nonbackgrounded postverbal

unaccusative arguments are pronounced in their base position (complement of V),

whereas postverbal subjects that are backgrounded are in a different position.

91Of course, this is merely a descriptive label, not an explanation (even a partial one) of Spanish word or-der.


51

Let us briefly recapitulate the evidence that the postverbal unaccusative subjects we

have seen are in their base position. First, the elicited data contained postverbal subjects

only with unaccusatives. Because we have the technology to assign these subjects

nominative Case without resorting to string-vacuous movement to the right, we assume

for reasons of parsimony that these subjects have not overtly moved. Second, we saw

several examples of postverbal unaccusative subjects that were not information-

structurally backgrounded (contrary to what we would expect from Chamoreau (2007)).

This suggests that the postverbal position of backgrounded subjects is not the one in

which postverbal unaccusative subjects are found. If postverbal unaccusative subjects are

in their base position (complement of V), this difference is (at least partly) accounted for,

because, under standard assumptions, backgrounded subjects of nonunaccusative verbs

could never move to the complement position of V.

Before acknowledging possible problems with the subject-verb–order data, I will

turn my attention to one more question that the data raise. We saw that in pragmatically

neutral contexts in Spanish and Modern Greek, SV order with an unaccusative is

seriously degraded compared to VS. However, P’urhépecha appears to display both.

Why? There are at least three possible reasons.

The difficulty of attaining a pragmatically neutral context. Prof. Edwin Williams

(p.c.) has noted that it is very difficult to be sure that one has in fact induced a

pragmatically neutral context. This is because, although the linguist may attempt to create

such a context when asking a speaker to produce a sentence, the speaker may have

arrived at the scene with certain presuppositions or thoughts already in mind. For

instance, if the subject of the sentence being produced is the name of a close friend of the


52

speaker, that could in theory suffice to make it “given” (backgrounded) for the speaker,

or, alternatively, topical. Alternatively, if the sentence is unusual from a real-world

standpoint (for instance, ‘The mouse ate the cat’), that could theoretically cause the

speaker, out of sheer surprise, to focus one of the constituents contributing to the

sentence’s real-world oddness. Either of these events would affect the sentence’s

information structure (destroying the intended pragmatic neutrality), and quite possibly,

in a language like P’urhépecha or Classical Latin, its syntax. Therefore, it is conceivable

that, despite my best efforts at pragmatic neutrality, the speakers realized the subjects of

some predicted unaccusatives as topics, which are left-peripheral in P’urhépecha, thereby

inducing SV order in some of these sentences.92 (Contrastively focused phrases are often

left-peripheral as well, but probably none of these appeared in the data, as they are

marked by the enclitic =ʃi (Chamoreau (2007)).)

Feature strength (under traditional covert movement or Move F). In English,

excluding marked contexts such as the there-inversion construction, unaccusative

arguments are virtually always forced to move to the clausal subject position. In checking

theory, this requirement can be implemented by appealing to the need of an unaccusative

argument to check a Case feature (presumably [+NOM]), in a Spec-head configuration,

against that of a suitable head in the inflectional layer.93 To account for languages such as

Spanish, Hebrew, and Modern Greek that display evidence of split intransitivity but allow

unaccusative arguments to be pronounced in situ, we must invoke one of the “variants of

92One might think that topicalization could be controlled for by paying attention to intonation, something that I did not do in this study because all elicitation took place over e-mail. However, Chamoreau (2007) notes (p. 135) that, whereas left-dislocated phrases in P’urhépecha are separated by an intonation break and sometimes coreferent with a demonstrative or person clitic in the main body of the sentence, topics have neither of these properties (they are not even separated by a pause). 93This movement also appears to satisfy the EPP.


53

covert movement” discussed above: traditional covert movement, Move F, Agree, or

Single-Output Syntax. To account for P’urhépecha, where both SV and VS orders are

apparently felicitous with predicted unaccusatives in pragmatically neutral contexts, we

can appeal to the notion of feature strength. If the “variant of covert movement” that is

most faithful to psychological reality turns out to be either traditional covert movement or

Move F, we can say that an unaccusative argument in P’urhépecha can be inserted into a

derivation with its [+NOM] feature either strong or weak. If it is strong, the argument

moves overtly; if it is weak, the argument moves covertly.

Flexible PF-privileging. Alternatively, if the most psychologically real “variant of

covert movement” turns out to be Single-Output Syntax (Bobaljik (2002)), then an

unaccusative argument always moves to the appropriate specifier in the inflectional

system; LF privileges the higher copy (because Case features must presumably be

checked at LF), and PF is free in P’urhépecha to privilege (i.e., render pronounceable)

either the higher or the lower copy. In pragmatically neutral contexts in Spanish and

Modern Greek, PF must apparently privilege the lower copy; in English, marked

constructions excluded, it must privilege the higher copy.

The data in this paper seem insufficient to suggest one account over the others.

Possible objections to the subject-verb–order data

First, it goes without saying that the tentative conclusions drawn here can and should

be made more valid by eliciting data from a much greater number of speakers.

Secondly, we might reasonably ask how we can be sure whether a given argument is

nominative or accusative. Nominative is realized as -Ø in P’urhépecha, and the


54

accusative marker is -ni.94 However, P’urhépecha has differential object marking:

whether or not accusative is marked overtly varies depending on the phrase’s animacy,

definiteness, genericness/specificity, and count/mass status (Chamoreau (1999)).

Importantly, a phrase must show accusative overtly if its referent is human (Chamoreau

(1999)). Therefore, if we use arguments that refer to humans (to the extent allowed by the

semantics of the verbs at hand), then we can confirm that a given argument is nominative

by making sure that it cannot be marked with -ni. I have not done this systematically, but

it is worth noting that -ni is absent not only from the subjects of the predicted unergatives

in (77-82) (as expected) but also from the argument Dora in both the SV and the VS

versions of (86) ‘Dora arrived’. This means we can be sure that it is nominative. It would

be very surprising under the UH if the Dora in either version were marked with -ni, as

the verb janó-ni ‘arrive’ is predicted to be unaccusative.

There is also a possible problem with eliciting data by asking speakers to translate

sentences from another language: they may be influenced by features of the stimulus

sentences.95

Subject-verb order in Spanish stimulus sentences. As mentioned previously, in the

sorts of pragmatically neutral contexts that I tried to create, Spanish (the stimulus

language) permits SV or VS order with unergatives but demands VS order with

unaccusatives. VS in Spanish stimulus sentences involving unaccusatives was therefore

nonnegotiable. In the unergative sentences, I almost invariably used SV, as my

94This is homophonous with the -ni that marks the infinitive (fn. 42) and with the 1.SG subject clitic =ni, as in (59). 95According to the language-modes model proposed by Grosjean (in, e.g., Grosjean (2007)), stimulation in one language may push a bilingual listener farther from being in a monolingual mode and closer to being in a bilingual mode. This may heighten the likelihood of dynamic interferences—temporary subconscious influences of one language on the other. Even if the language-modes model turns out to be inadequate, dy-namic interferences are surely a real phenomenon.


55

understanding is that this is the commoner order in pragmatically neutral contexts, but I

used VS in a couple of instances in which this order truly seemed to me to be both

perfectly natural and plausibly common. To minimize the possibility of the P’urhépecha

speakers being influenced in their translations by the word order of the Spanish

sentences, I prefaced every relevant section of every questionnaire with the following

explanation (in Spanish):96

To the extent possible, it is important that you not let yourself be influenced by the word or-der in the Spanish sentence. What follows is a brief illustration of why this is so important. Suppose that a linguist asks me to translate into Spanish […] the following short dialogue in English: “What happened?” “John arrived.” The word order in the response is name-verb, so if I let myself be influenced by that, I would reply to the linguist: —¿Qué pasó? —Juan llegó. However, the most natural way to say ‘John arrived’ in Spanish in this context—in response to the question “What happened?”—is (at least for me) —¿Qué pasó? —Llegó Juan. In other words, the response has the order verb-name, not name-verb as in English. In the same way, what we are interested in is the most natural way to respond to the question “What happened?” in P’urhépecha, which has nothing to do with the word order in the response in Spanish.

The fact that every Spanish unaccusative sentence was VS, whereas the great majority of

elicited P’urhépecha sentences involving predicted unaccusatives were SV, indicates that

the translation-based nature of the elicitation did not induce in the speakers a bias so great

that they systematically did violence to the word order of P’urhépecha. If the elicited VS

sentences do represent dynamic interferences from Spanish (see fn. 95), these

interferences were intermittent rather than pervasive. 96This explanation followed the instructions for the translation task.


56

How concerned should we be that (at least some of) the P’urhépecha responses may

have been biased by the word order in the Spanish stimulus sentences? It is worth at least

mentioning that no Spanish speaker who truly knows English would translate the

stimulus (86a) Llegó Dora into English as *Arrived Dora. This might make us think that

we should in fact not worry about dynamic interferences from Spanish at all. But the

problem is not so easily dispelled. The English (non)sentence *Arrived Dora is ill formed

syntactically. But if a P’urhépecha speaker, owing to a dynamic interference, translates a

VS Spanish sentence by a VS P’urhépecha sentence when P’urhépecha information

structure would actually demand SV, his or her output is still a well-formed sentence of

P’urhépecha syntactically. In this scenario, the dynamic interference is presumably able

to corrupt the output by “parasitizing” an existing word-order possibility in P’urhépecha

(VS), even though in context it is infelicitous information-structurally. In light of this

consideration, the support for the UH that the subject-verb data appear to provide must be

considered tentative. I will mention a possible way to address the limitations of the

subject-verb–order data in the Conclusion.

C. Passivizability

One final property that has often been ascribed to unaccusative verbs is their inability

to passivize. Under the UH and the generative account of passivization (see

“Passivization” under the section “Passive-looking participles”), the motivation for this

claim seems straightforward. According to the account of passivization, the passive

morpheme, upon attaching to a verb, internalizes the verb’s EA and “absorbs” the

accusative Case that it assigns. Therefore, this morpheme should not be able to attach to


57

unaccusative verbs, which, according to the UH, have neither an EA nor the ability to

assign accusative. However, this prediction appears to be falsified by data from

P’urhépecha,97 which does allow predicted unaccusatives to passivize:

(91) e -nga -ha -Ø -ti (16th-c. P’urhépecha98 e -ŋa -xa -Ø -ti (Gilberti (1987 [1558]), cited in be -PASS -PROG -PRS -IND+3 (Chamoreau (2005), (7), p. 72))) lit. ‘It is being been.’ id. ‘Everyone is (= exists).’ (92) e -nga -Ø -Ø -ti (16th-c. P’urhépecha, ibid.) e -ŋa -Ø -Ø -ti be -PASS -HAB?? -PRET??99 -IND+3 lit. ‘It is been.’ id. ‘Everyone is (= exists).’

(93) ninasti paskwaɽu. (Chamoreau (2007), ni -na -s -Ø -ti paskwaɽu. (8b), p. 130) go -PASS -PFV -PRS -IND+3 Pátzcuaro lit. ‘It was gone to Pátzcuaro.’ id. ‘One/somebody went to Pátzcuaro.’ (94) na ninaa morelia? (Chamoreau (2005), na ni -na -a -Ø morelia? fn. 8, (b), p. 79) how go -PASS -FUT -INTRG100 Morelia lit. ‘How will it be gone to Morelia?’ id. ‘How will one/we(?)/some people go to Morelia?’101

97I have made minor modifications to the examples. 98The first line of examples (91) and (92) represents how the words were transcribed by the Spanish (except for the hyphens and Ø symbols, which were inserted by me to indicate morpheme divisions). The second line is a “translation” into IPA by Chamoreau (2005). The literal translations in (91-93) were also added by me. In these examples, I assume that the verb ‘be’ is to be interpreted as meaning ‘exist’. 99This example appears to have no overt aspect or tense marking. Foster analyzes certain instances of -Ø-Ø in the aspect and tense slots as indicating the preterite habitual tense, which she claims expresses meanings such as ‘He said it of all the past days’, ‘He took it with him as always’, and ‘He saw it as he always does’. On her analysis, the preterite habitual uses zero allomorphs of the habitual and preterite morphemes. Wares claims that the future patterns as an aspect rather than a tense and that it too has a zero allomorph; if this is the case, then (92) could represent a present with future aspect. Either of these possibilities suggests that the literal translation given for the example might not be quite accurate, and that perhaps the same is true of the idiomatic translation. Of course, perhaps the translations are accurate, and the explanation is that the tense-aspect system of P’urhépecha has changed since the 16th c. If this is the case, then the example is presuma-bly a present (-Ø) whose aspect is also realized by a zero morpheme. 100Interrogative is considered a mood in P’urhépecha (Wares, p. 97). (In Foster (p. 57, §414), it is subsumed under the clarificational mood, which is used in questions and, in certain tenses, in answers to questions.) 101The idiomatic translation in this example was added by me. That the goer in this sentence can be prag-matically understood as ‘we’ is merely a guess on my part, based on my familiarity with the real-world


58

(95) misituitʃa, tepanaʃati. (Chamoreau (2007), misitu -itʃa,102 tepa -na -ʃa -ti (31), p. 140) cat -PL be.fat -PASS -PROG -IND+3 lit. ‘Cats, it is being gotten fat.’ (i.e., there is getting fat going on that is being

done by cats)

Similar facts have been discovered in other languages:

(96) Lithuanian103 (Timberlake (1982), cited in Baker et al. (1989)) Kur mūs gimta, kur augta? where by.us bear.N.SG.PASS where grow.N.SG.PASS lit. ‘Where was it been born by us, where grown up?’ id. ‘Where were we born, where did we grow up?’ (97) Lithuanian (ibid.) Ar būta tenai langinių? and be.PASS.N.SG there window.GEN lit. ‘And had it been existed by windows there?’ id. ‘Were there really windows there?’104

(98) Turkish (Knecht (1985), (63d), p. 62) Yağmur yağ -ınca Serencebey yokuş -un -da kay -ıl -ır. rain fall -ADV Serencebey hill -POSS -LOC slip -PASS -PRS lit. ‘After it rains, it is slipped on Serencebey Hill.’ id. ‘After it rains, people slip on Serencebey Hill.’105

(99) Turkish (ibid., (63g), p. 62) Şu orman -da sık sık kaybol -un -ur. that forest -LOC often disappear -PASS -PRS lit. ‘It is often disappeared in that forest.’ id. ‘People often disappear in that forest.’106

contexts in which other languages deploy impersonal constructions. (The reason I had to make a guess is that Chamoreau’s paper, which is in Spanish, translates the sentence using a Spanish impersonal construc-tion that does not exist in English: ¿Cómo se irá a Morelia?) 102This phrase is what Chamoreau (2007) calls a precision phrase. For arguments that it is not a clausal sub-ject and discussion of its syntactic, pragmatic, and intonational properties, see her article (pp. 138-143). I will tentatively suggest, on the basis of the generative account of passivization, that the precision phrase is underlyingly the EA of the verb but is internalized by passivization and dislocated, but I will not explore this issue further here. 103I have slightly altered the literal translations of the Lithuanian examples. 104Baker et al. (1989) also cite from Timberlake (1982) Lithuanian examples of a passivized raising verb (lit. ‘It was seemed to be a hero by him’) and a double passive (lit. ‘It was been blown down by the wind by that leaf’). 105The idiomatic translations were inferred by me. The source of the Turkish examples (Knecht (1985)) was mentioned in Ackema (1995), p. 198, fn. 13. 106Knecht (1985) also gives examples of double passivization in Turkish (some cited from Özkaragöz (1982)), for which she provides translations such as ‘In this hospital one is cared for well by one’. The dou-


59

(100) Classical Latin (Cicero, Pro Quinct. 1.3, cited in Lewis & Short (1879), “veniō”) ad mē ventum est. to me come.N.NOM.SG.PERF.PART.PASS is lit. ‘It was come to me.’ id. ‘It has fallen to me’ (Lewis & Short) or ‘They have had recourse to me’ (C.

D. Yonge, Ed.) (101) Classical Latin (Cicero, Q. Fr. 2.1, cited in Lewis & Short (1879), “eō”) ībātur in eam sententiam. go.3.SG.IMPF.IND.PASS into that opinion lit. ‘It was gone over to that opinion’ (in voting) id. ‘The senators were crossing the floor in support of this view’ (Shuckburgh) Furthermore, Baker et al. (1989) cite other researchers as having made similar reports for

Irish and Classical Sanskrit.

Unaccusative passivization: a threat to the UH?

Does the fact that unaccusatives (and raising verbs and verbs that are already

passive) can passivize in certain languages mean that the UH must be discarded? Given

the success of this hypothesis in explaining a wide range of syntactic phenomena

crosslinguistically, we would be justified in being reluctant to do so. And in fact, it seems

that rejecting the UH on the basis of these facts is unnecessary. The facts do compel us to

revise our understanding of something, but it is not the UH.

In our discussion of passive-looking participles, we were confronted with a very

similar problem: how can unaccusative verbs form participles (such as fallen) that are

apparently passive in form? Burzio’s solution was to say that, although the passive

morpheme is typically required to attach to a verb that has two things—an EA and a

ble passive can be captured more clearly by a more literal (albeit ungrammatical) translation: ‘In this hospi-tal it is been well cared for’.


60

direct object107—a language can “choose” to make either of these requirements optional.

Burzio discussed this issue in the context of passive-looking participles (which, under

this account, can all unproblematically be regarded as truly passive), but his account can

be straightforwardly extended to passives in general. If a language makes the EA

requirement on the passive morpheme optional, the morpheme can attach to an

unaccusative (which has no EA) without having to “worry” about internalizing an EA

that does not exist.108

Baker et al.’s account

Baker et al. (1989) propose an account of the “surprising” passivization possibilities

in languages such as Lithuanian, which I have sketched here briefly (expanding on

certain points). In these languages, the passive morpheme has category N. If it starts out

in the EA position (the clausal subject position), it incorporates into I, and then the I +

PASS complex cliticizes onto V. The passive morpheme deprives V of its ability to assign

accusative, so the direct object, if there is one, moves to subject position to get Case.

However, because in these languages the passive morpheme is an N, it can also be

generated as the direct object of an unaccusative. Because it cannot get Case in this

position, it moves to subject position, and the derivation proceeds as before, resulting in a

passivized unaccusative. Raising verbs passivize analogously, except that the passive

107For a more complete version of the latter requirement, see fn. 37. 108On this account, the same is true of raising verbs. Double passivization could be accounted for as fol-lows. The passive morpheme, when attaching to a verb that is already passive, internalizes the argument in the EA position (which originated within VP). It does not have to “worry” about whether the passive verb has a direct object at that point in the derivation (in most cases, it should not), because, in languages with double passivization, the direct-object requirement on the passive morpheme is optional.


61

morpheme (of category N) gets to the clausal subject position by raising from a lower

clause rather than from direct-object position (as with unaccusatives).109

Baker et al. (1989)’s account may be the correct implementation of Burzio’s

proposal that we must posit that some characteristics of the passive morpheme vary

crosslinguistically. For our purposes it suffices to recognize that, if we acknowledge that

the passive morpheme has different properties in different languages, we are freed from

having to give up the UH in the face of unaccusative passivization. We are also freed

from concluding that, because unaccusatives can passivize in P’urhépecha, this language

must not have split intransitivity ipso facto. The participle and subject-verb–order data

suggesting that it does have split intransitivity are preliminary, but, on the account

proposed here, this interim conclusion is not threatened by the unaccusative-passivization

facts.

IV. Conclusion

Summary

In this paper I have given preliminary evidence suggesting two conclusions. First,

actively paraphrasable passive-looking participles in P’urhépecha can apparently be

formed from predicted unaccusatives but not from predicted unergatives, suggesting that

the language has split intransitivity. Secondly, VS sentences were elicited in

pragmatically neutral contexts only when the verb was predicted to be unaccusative,

suggesting—more tentatively—that P’urhépecha is correctly described specifically by the

109Baker et al. (1989) also give a derivation for double passivization, in which one passive morpheme (category N) is generated in the EA position and the other is generated in direct-object position.


62

Unaccusative Hypothesis,110 which states that the argument of an unaccusative is base-

generated as a direct object. If this account is in fact correct for P’urhépecha, overt

movement of this argument to the clausal subject position—presumably to check a

[+NOM] feature—is optional but clearly possible. In the cases in which the argument does

not move overtly, the “variants of covert movement” that have been proposed in

generative grammar over the past few decades more than equip us to allow it to check its

Case features covertly. I think, though, that the data in this paper have nothing to say

about which variant most faithfully captures psychological reality.

Implications for the Unaccusative Hypothesis

If the picture that emerges from my data is accurate, then that will definitely

represent a success for the hypothesis. The UH was proposed on the basis of rather

“familiar” languages, and split intransitivity was subsequently claimed to be universal. If

my preliminary conclusions about P’urhépecha are correct, that will not mean that split

intransitivity is in fact universal, but it should give us a measure of confidence in the

hypothesis. This is because, in that scenario, it will have made correct predictions for a

language that is both typologically very different from those on the basis of which it was

proposed and genetically isolated. This study, although it represents only the beginning

of what we know about split intransitivity in P’urhépecha, should remind us of the dual

importance of understudied languages to linguistic theory: not only can they open us up

110I have distinguished the two questions of whether P’urhépecha has split intransitivity and whether it is correctly described by the Unaccusative Hypothesis because the UH would be rejected by linguists working within nontransformational approaches, but the number of phenomena in which predicted unergatives and unaccusatives behave differently across the world’s languages is, I think, too great for any linguist to hypothesize that split intransitivity does not exist in at least some languages.


63

to linguistic possibilities we never knew existed but also they are an indispensable testing

ground for proposed universals.

Suggestions for future research

Although the findings that P’urhépecha apparently has split intransitivity and is

correctly described by the UH are certainly exciting, they must, as I have noted, be

regarded as preliminary. Despite the crosslinguistic correlation between predicted

unaccusativity and the ability to form actively paraphrasable passive-looking participles

(see (41)), the counterevidence in fn. 27, involving participles of exactly this type formed

from predicted unergatives, is an unmistakable challenge to the validity of these

participles as an unaccusative diagnostic. It may turn out, though, that the diagnostic is

valid, but only in some languages, and that whether it is valid for a certain language

depends on the properties of the passive morpheme in said language. After all,

acknowledging the crosslinguistic variation in these same properties is what allowed us to

account for why unaccusatives can form passive-looking participles and other passive

forms in the first place (thereby dispelling a possible counterargument to the existence of

split intransitivity in P’urhépecha). If the participle diagnostic proves valid in

P’urhépecha—in other words, if actively paraphrasable passive-looking participles in this

language can never be formed from predicted unergatives—then the participle data in this

paper will constitute strong evidence for split intransitivity in this language. This can be

tested by eliciting judgments on the grammaticality of such participles formed from

predicted unaccusatives and unergatives.


64

As mentioned, the tentative conclusions drawn from the subject-verb–order facts

should be tested more rigorously by eliciting data from a much greater number of

speakers. The potential problems with translation-based elicitation should be

compensated for by also eliciting judgments on prefabricated sentences of P’urhépecha.

Lastly, Prof. Edwin Williams (p.c.) points out that, if the preliminary conclusions of

this study turn out to be accurate, it will be worth investigating whether P’urhépecha

could possibly have acquired split intransitivity through membership in a Sprachbund,

rather than by virtue of its being a universal. The implementation of these proposals must,

however, be left to future research.


65

Literature Cited Ackema, Peter. Syntax Below Zero. Utrecht: Onderzoeksinstituut voor Taal en Spraak,

Universiteit Utrecht, 1995. Web. Downloadable in part from let.uu.nl. Ackerman, Farrell, and Adele E. Goldberg. “Constraints on Adjectival Past Participles.”

Conceptual Structure, Discourse and Language. Ed. Adele E. Goldberg. CSLI Pub-lications, 1996. Print.

Alexiadou, Artemis, Elena Anagnostopoulou, and Martin Everaert. Introduction. The Un-

accusativity Puzzle: Explorations of the Syntax-Lexicon Interface. Ed. Artemis Alex-iadou, Elena Anagnostopoulou, and Martin Everaert. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2004. 1-21. Print.

Babby, Leonard H. Existential Sentences and Negation in Russian. Ann Arbor: Karoma,

1980. Print. Baker, Mark, Kyle Johnson, and Ian Roberts. “Passive Arguments Raised.” Linguistic

Inquiry 20.2 (1989): 219-51. JSTOR. Web. <http://www.jstor.org/stable/4178625>. Baker, Mark C. “Building and Merging, Not Checking: The Nonexistence of (Aux)-S-V-

O Languages.” Linguistic Inquiry 33.2 (2002): 321-28. Belletti, Adriana. “The Case of Unaccusatives.” Linguistic Inquiry 19.1 (1988): 1-34.

JSTOR. Web. <http://www.jstor.org/pss/4178572>. Bobaljik, Jonathan D. “A-Chains at the PF-Interface: Copies and Covert Movement.”

Natural Language & Linguistic Theory 20.2 (2002): 197-267. Borik, Olga. “Sintaktičeskij priznak neakkuzativnosti glagola (na materiale russkogo

jayzka).” M.A. Thesis. Dept. of Theoretical and Applied Linguistics, Moscow State University, 1995.

Bresnan, Joan. “The Passive in Lexical Theory.” The Mental Representation of Gram-

matical Relations. Ed. Joan Bresnan. Cambridge, MA: MIT, 1982. 3-86. Print. Bresnan, Joan. “Lexicality and Argument Structure.” Paper presented at Paris Syntax and

Semantics Conference, October 12, 1995. 1995. Web. Burzio, Luigi. Italian Syntax: A Government-Binding Approach. Dordrecht: D. Reidel

Pub., 1986. Print.


66

Caesar, Gaius Julius. Caesar’s Gallic War (Commentāriī dē Bellō Gallicō). Trans. W. A. McDevitte and W. S. Bohn. 1st ed. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1869. Harper’s New Classical Library. Perseus Digital Library. Tufts University. Web. <http:// www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.02.0001%3Abook%3D7%3Achapter%3D84>.

Cetnarowska, Bożena. “Adjectival past-participle formation as an unaccusativity diagnos-

tic in English and in Polish.” Morphology 2000: Selected Papers from the 9th Mor-phology Meeting, Vienna, 24-28 February 2000. Ed. Sabrina Bendjaballah. 2000. 59-72.

Chamoreau, Claudine. “Le marquage différentiel de l’objet en purépecha.” La Linguis-

tique 35.2 (1999): 99-114. Web. Chamoreau, Claudine. “Reorganización de la voz pasiva en purépecha: una visión

dinámica.” Dinámica lingüística de las lenguas en contacto. Ed. Claudine Chamo-reau and Yolanda Lastra. Hermosillo, Sonora, Mexico: Universidad de Sonora (Uni-son), 2005. 77-99.

Chamoreau, Claudine. “Looking for a new participant. The Purepecha passive.” Studies

in Voice and Transitivity (Estudios de voz y transitividad). Ed. Zarina Estrada Fernández, Søren Wichmann, Claudine Chamoreau, and Albert Álvarez González. Munich: LINCOM Europa, 2007. 127-45. Web.

Chomsky, Noam. Lectures on Government and Binding. Dordrecht, Holland: Foris Publi-

cations, 1981. Print. Chomsky, Noam. “Categories and transformations.” In The Minimalist Program. Cam-

bridge, MA: MIT, 1995. 219-394. Print. Chomsky, Noam. “Derivation by phase.” Ken Hale: A life in language. Ed. Michael

Kenstowicz. Cambridge, MA: MIT, 2001. 1-52. Print. Cicero, Marcus Tullius. “Epistulae ad Quintum Frātrem.” Letters to His Brother Quin-

tus/2.1. Trans. Evelyn Shuckburgh. (1909). Wikisource, 22 Mar. 2007. Web. <http:// en.wikisource.org/wiki/Letters_to_his_brother_Quintus/2.1?match=la>.

Cicero, Marcus Tullius. “Prō Quinctiō.” For Publius Quinctius. Trans. C. D. Yonge.

(1913). Wikisource, 16 July 2006. Web. <http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/For_Publius_ Quinctius>.

Devine, A. M., and Laurence D. Stephens. Latin Word Order: Structured Meaning and

Information. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2006. Print. Eguzkitza, Andolin, and Georg A. Kaiser. “Postverbal subjects in Romance and German:

Some notes on the Unaccusative Hypothesis.” Lingua 109 (1999): 195-219. Web.


67

Foster, Mary LeCron. The Tarascan Language. Berkeley: University of California, 1969. Print.

Gilberti, Maturino. Diccionario de la lengua tarasca o de Michoacán, impreso en México

el año de 1559, reimpreso bajo la dirección y cuidado del Dr. Ernesto Ramos Mesa. Ed. Ernesto Ramos Mesa. Guadalajara, Mexico, 1962 (orig. 1559). Print.

“The Greek Alphabet.” PowerPoint presentation. Web. <experimentfotini.wikispaces.

com/file/view/The+Greek+alphabet+Fotini.ppt> Grewendorf, Günther. Ergativity in German. Dordrecht, Holland: Foris Publications,

1989. Grosjean, François. “Processing mixed language: issues, findings and models.” The Bi-

lingualism Reader. Ed. Li Wei. 2nd ed. London: Routledge, 2007. Print. Harris, Alice C. “Georgian and the Unaccusative Hypothesis.” Language 58.2 (1982):

290-306. JSTOR. Web. <http://www.jstor.org/stable/414100>. Harves, Stephanie. “Getting impersonal: Case, agreement, and distributive po-phrases in

Russian.” Formal Approaches to Slavic Linguistics (2003). Web. Haspelmath, Martin. “Passive participles across languages.” Voice: Form and Function.

Ed. Barbara A. Fox and Paul J. Hopper. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Pub., 1994. 151-77.

Hirakawa, Makiko. “Unaccusativity in Second Language Japanese and English.” Diss.

McGill University, 2000. Web. Huang, C.T. James. “Move WH in a Language without WH Movement.” The Linguistic

Review 1 (1982): 369-416. “HUGE Issue with Showing Vulnerability.... : Avoidant Personality Disorder Forum.”

Psychology & Mental Health Forums. 22 Feb. 2010. Web. <http://www.psychforums .com/avoidant-personality/topic46830.html>. Forum post by “mystery7.”

Iwasaki, Shin-ya. “A cognitive analysis of English cognate objects.” Constructions

(2007). Web. <http://www.constructions-online.de/articles/1174/index_html/?search term=fast>.

Kayne, Richard S. The Antisymmetry of Syntax. Cambridge, MA: MIT, 1994. Print. Kibort, Anna. “The Ins and Outs of the Participle-Adjective Conversion Rule.” Proceed-

ings of the LFG05 Conference, University of Bergen. Ed. Miriam Butt and Tracy Holloway King. CSLI Publications, 2005.


68

Knecht, Laura Ellen. “Subject and Object in Turkish.” Diss. MIT, 1985. DSpace@MIT. Web. <http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/15201>.

Kuno, Susumu, and Ken’ichi Takami. Functional Constraints in Grammar: On the uner-

gative-unaccusative distinction. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Pub., 2004. Print. Levin, Beth, and Malka Rappaport Hovav. Unaccusativity: At the Syntax–Lexical Seman-

tics Interface. Cambridge, MA: MIT, 1995. Print. Lewis, Charlton T., and Charles Short. “Eo.” Def. IIB1a. A Latin Dictionary. Oxford:

Oxford UP, 1879. Perseus Digital Library. Web. <http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/ hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.04.0059%3Aentry%3Deo1>.

Lewis, Charlton T., and Charles Short. “Pugno.” Def. I. A Latin Dictionary. Oxford: Ox-

ford UP, 1879. Perseus Digital Library. Web. <http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/ text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.04.0059%3Aentry%3Dpugno>.

Lewis, Charlton T., and Charles Short. “Venio.” Def. I(b). A Latin Dictionary. Oxford:

Oxford UP, 1879. Perseus Digital Library. Web. <http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/ hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.04.0059%3Aentry%3Dvenio>.

Lewis, M. Paul, ed. Ethnologue: Languages of the World. 16th ed. Dallas, TX: SIL Inter-

national, 2009. Ethnologue report for language code: pua (Purepecha, Western Highland). SIL International. Web. <http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp ?code=pua>.

Lewis, M. Paul, ed. Ethnologue: Languages of the World. 16th ed. Dallas: SIL Interna-

tional, 2009. Ethnologue report for language code: tsz (Purepecha). SIL Interna-tional. Web. <http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=tsz>.

Lozano, Cristóbal. “Focus and split-intransitivity: the acquisition of word order alterna-

tions in non-native Spanish.” Second Language Research 22.2 (2004): 145-87. Web. <http://slr.sagepub.com/content/22/2/145>.

Markantonatou, Stella. “Modern Greek Deverbal Nominals: an LMT Approach.” Journal

of Linguistics 31 (1995): 267-99. JSTOR. Web. <http://www.jstor.org/stable/ 4176319>.

Marvin, Tatjana. “Past participles in reduced relatives.” 2000. MS. Web. May, Robert. The Grammar of Quantification. Diss. MIT, 1977. May, Robert. Logical Form: Its Structure and Derivation. Cambridge, MA: MIT, 1985.

Print.


69

Mendoza, Martha. “Derivational Resources in P’urhépecha: Morphological Complexity and Verb Formation.” Acta Linguistica Hungarica 54.2 (2007): 157-72. Web.

Merchant, Jason. Unaccusativity phenomena. Syntax handout. Nava, Fernando, and Ricardo Maldonado. “Basic Voice Patterns in Tarascan

(P’orhepecha).” Language, Culture, and Mind (2002): 461-77. Özkaragöz, İnci. “Monoclausal Double Passives in Turkish.” (1982). Paper presented at

the Conference on Turkish Language and Linguistics in Atatürk’s Turkey, University of California, Berkeley.

Perlmutter, David M. “Impersonal Passives and the Unaccusative Hypothesis.” Proceed-

ings of the Fourth Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society. Berkeley Lin-guistics Society, University of California, Berkeley, 1978. 157-89.

Pesetsky, David M. “Paths and Categories.” Diss. MIT, 1982. Pinker, Steven. The Language Instinct. New York: W. Morrow and Co., 1994. Print. Pullum, Geoffrey K. “Citation Etiquette Beyond Thunderdome.” Natural Language &

Linguistic Theory 6 (1988): 579-88. JSTOR. Web. Quesada, J. Diego. “Obituary: Adios to Passive in Spanish.” La Linguistique 33.1 (1997):

41-62. JSTOR. Web. <http://www.jstor.org/pss/30249112>. Reinhart, Tanya, and Tal Siloni. “Thematic Arity Operations and Parametric Variations.”

2003. MS. OTS Working Papers in Linguistics. Schoorlemmer, Maaike. “Syntactic Unaccusativity in Russian.” The Unaccusativity Puz-

zle: Explorations of the Syntax–Lexicon Interface. Ed. Artemis Alexiadou, Elena Anagnostopoulou, and Martin Everaert. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2004. 207-42. Print. Oxford Studies in Theoretical Linguistics.

Shlonsky, Ur. “Null and Displaced Subjects.” Diss. MIT, 1987. DSpace@MIT. Web.

<http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/14703>. Simpson, Jane. “Resultatives.” Papers in Lexical-Functional Grammar. Ed. Lori Levin,

Malka Rappaport, and Annie Zaenen. Indiana University Linguistics Club: Bloom-ington, IN, 1983. 143-57. Web.

Timberlake, Alan. “The Impersonal Passive in Lithuanian.” Proceedings of the Eighth

Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society (1982). Print.


70

Velázquez Pahuamba, Juan, Gilberto Jerónimo Mateo, Edelmira Estrada Bacilio, and

Raúl Máximo Cortés. “Vocabulario Práctico Bilingüe: P’urhépecha-Español.” Insti-tuto Nacional para la Educación de los Adultos (INEA) and www.purhepecha.com. mx, 1995. Web. <http://www.purhepecha.com.mx/takukata.php>.

Wares, Alan C. “Tarascan Verb Inflection.” SIL-Mexico Workpapers 1 (1974): 93-100.

Ethnologue, Languages of the World. SIL International. Web. <http://www. ethnologue.com/show_work.asp?id=12626>.

Williams, Edwin. Rev. of Unaccusativity: At the Syntax–Lexical Semantics Interface, by

Beth Levin and Malka Rappaport Hovav. Journal of Linguistics 33.2 (1997): 595-600. JSTOR. Web. <http://www.jstor.org/pss/4176433>.

Zubizarreta, Maria Luisa. “Chapter 3: Clausal Structure, the Position of Subjects, and a

Case of Prosodically Motivated Movement in Romance.” Prosody, Focus, and Word Order. Cambridge, MA: MIT, 1998. 99-158.

Documents

Unaccusativity in P'urhepecha - UCSC Directory of individual web