Unaccusativity in HPSG

[aranovch at sprynet.com]

Dear Ivan:

In a 2003 paper I look into one of the tests used to distinguish unaccusatives from unergatives in Spanish, the availability of a postverbal subject. What I show is that once you look at the pragmatic/semantic aspects that determine split intransitivity, the need to represent unaccusativity as a syntactic phenomenon vanishes. There has been mounting research pointing in this direction (research on test mismatches, cross-linguistic variation, etc.). See, for instance, work by Delia Bentley, Antonella Sorace, Annie Zaenen, and my own, on these issues. I believe the right move in HPSG is to 'stick to the surface', as its basic philosophy dictates. Trying to find a way to represent 'unaccusative' subjects as underlying objects (i.e. by making them the value of an 'ERGATIVE' attribute, or something like that) is, in my view, the wrong way to go. Better to try to explain the phenomena that some believe characterize the class of unaccusatives on the basis of their particular semant!
 ic or pragmatic properties. Hope this contributes to the discussion.

-Raul Aranovich


Aranovich, Raúl. 2003. 'Two Types of Postverbal Subjects in Spanish: Evidence from Binding.' In Claire Beyssade, Olivier Bonami, Patricia Cabredo Hofherr, Francis Corblin (eds.) Empirical Issues in Formal Syntax and Semantics 4. Paris: Presses Universitaires de Paris-Sorbonne. 227-242