Book chapter
The Unaccusative Hypothesis and a Reflexive Construction in German and Dutch
STAEFCRAEFT: STUDIES IN GERMANIC LINGUISTICS, Antonsen, Elmer H., & Hock, Hans Henrich [Eds], Amsterdam, The Netherlands: John Benjamins Publishing Company, 1991, pp 39-54
01/01/1991
Abstract
German & Dutch reflexive constructions of the type Die Nachricht hat sich verbreitet/Het nieuws heeft zich verspreid 'the news spread' are examined in light of evidence supporting Luigi Burzio's unaccusative hypothesis ("Intransitive Verbs and Italian Auxiliaries," PhD dissertation, MIT, 1981) regarding the Italian counterpart of these constructions. Four tests for unaccusativity in German & Dutch are reviewed, & it is argued that only the ungrammaticality of impersonal passives (IPs) formed from unaccusative predicates is a valid diagnostic. As the subject position of an unaccusative predicate is by definition not a theta position, theta-role absorption in passivization would apply vacuously. German precicates of the class under study permit IPs (hier wird sich nicht gelangweilt 'nobody gets bored here'); therefore, their subject position must be a theta position. The ungrammaticality of the corresponding Dutch IPs is due to lexicalization of reanalysis in Dutch, leaving reflexives to function as true objects in IPs. Nonreflexive counterparts of these reflexives permit IPs in both languages (eg rollen 'to roll'). Due to the characteristic object properties of the subjects of such predicates, they are the most likely to test positively for unaccusativity; as they do not, it is unlikely that any German or Dutch predicate is unaccusative. J. Hitchcock
Details
- Title: Subtitle
- The Unaccusative Hypothesis and a Reflexive Construction in German and Dutch
- Creators
- Sarah M B Fagan
- Resource Type
- Book chapter
- Publication Details
- STAEFCRAEFT: STUDIES IN GERMANIC LINGUISTICS, Antonsen, Elmer H., & Hock, Hans Henrich [Eds], Amsterdam, The Netherlands: John Benjamins Publishing Company, 1991, pp 39-54
- ISSN
- 0304-0763
- Language
- English
- Date published
- 01/01/1991
- Academic Unit
- Linguistics; German
- Record Identifier
- 9984222809702771
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