16.1023, Qs: Governing Lang Change;Unaccusative and Reflexive

[Marie Klopfenstein marie@linguistlist.org]

LINGUIST List: Vol-16-1023. Mon Apr 04 2005. ISSN: 1068 - 4875.

Subject: 16.1023, Qs: Governing Lang Change;Unaccusative and Reflexive

Moderators: Anthony Aristar, Wayne State U <aristar at linguistlist.org>
            Helen Aristar-Dry, Eastern Michigan U <hdry at linguistlist.org>

Reviews (reviews at linguistlist.org)
        Sheila Collberg, U of Arizona
        Terry Langendoen, U of Arizona

Homepage: http://linguistlist.org/

The LINGUIST List is funded by Eastern Michigan University, Wayne
State University, and donations from subscribers and publishers.

Editor for this issue: Jessica Boynton <jessica at linguistlist.org>
================================================================

We'd like to remind readers that the responses to queries are usually
best posted to the individual asking the question. That individual is
then strongly encouraged to post a summary to the list. This policy was
instituted to help control the huge volume of mail on LINGUIST; so we
would appreciate your cooperating with it whenever it seems appropriate.

In addition to posting a summary, we'd like to remind people that it
is usually a good idea to personally thank those individuals who have
taken the trouble to respond to the query.

To post to LINGUIST, use our convenient web form at
http://linguistlist.org/LL/posttolinguist.html.


===========================Directory==============================

1)
Date: 04-Apr-2005
From: Heather Schmidt < hschmidt at uiuc.edu >
Subject: Institutions that Govern Language Change

2)
Date: 03-Apr-2005
From: Konrad Szczesniak < kport at ultra.cto.us.edu.pl >
Subject: Alternating Unaccusative Verbs and the Reflexive

	
-------------------------Message 1 ----------------------------------
Date: Mon, 04 Apr 2005 12:09:05
From: Heather Schmidt < hschmidt at uiuc.edu >
Subject: Institutions that Govern Language Change


Fund Drive 2005 is now on! Visit http://linguistlist.org/donate.html to donate now!

Editor's note: This issue contains non-ISO-8859-1 characters.
To view the correct characters, go to
http://linguistlist.org/issues/16/16-1023.html.

I was just wondering if anyone knew of any articles or sources about
official institutions that govern language change.  I'm mainly looking for
information about the French Academy, but if there are other sources, those
are welcome too.  I'm just wondering about the general effectiveness of
these institutions.

Linguistic Field(s): Sociolinguistics



	
-------------------------Message 2 ----------------------------------
Date: Mon, 04 Apr 2005 12:09:07
From: Konrad Szczesniak < kport at ultra.cto.us.edu.pl >
Subject: Alternating Unaccusative Verbs and the Reflexive

	

Dear Linguists,

I am working on the much-discussed causative analysis of unaccusative verbs
and I'm looking for examples of the following phenomenon in as many
languages as possible:

It is a widely recognized regularity that alternating unaccusative verbs in
some languages (especially Romance and Slavic languages) require a
reflexive clitic in the intransitive/inchoative pattern. For example, in
Polish one says

Dziecko zamrozi?o mleko (The child froze the milk)
Mleko zamrozi?o SIE (The milk froze REFLEXIVE-SIE)

This fact is addressed and explained very well by most current approaches
to unaccusativity and the causative alternation. But what these approaches
don't capture very well is that in Polish (and probably in many other
languages), a sizable portion of such unaccusative verbs has non-reflexive
inchoative equivalents:

Mleko zamrozi?o SIE / Mleko zamarz?o
Milk froze REFLEXIVE-SIE / Milk froze (non-reflexive [NR])

Now, the non-reflexive version does not participate in the causative
alternation:

*Dziecko zamarz?o mleko (The child froze[NR] the milk)

Can you send me similar examples of non-reflexive non-alternating
unaccusative verbs in other languages - verbs which are only used in the
inchoative/intransitive structure? I would greatly appreciate examples both
from Slavic and Romance languages as well as ones from non-European
languages, which I will later post as a summary. Thank you.

Best regards,

Konrad Szczesniak
Institute of English
Silesian University
Poland

Linguistic Field(s): Semantics
                     Syntax
                     Typology








-----------------------------------------------------------
LINGUIST List: Vol-16-1023