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This chapter wraps up the main results of the book. These are as follows. Absence of Principle B effects can be elegantly accounted for in terms of Distributed Morphology. Simplex reflexives are merged in a configuration of inalienable possession under unaccusative syntax, and their binding properties are derived by Agree. Self-reflexives share the syntax of floating quantifiers, raising to an adjoined position from which they probe their antecedent under Agree. Simplex and complex reflexives in PPs behave differently, depending on the adjunction site of the PP. French, Italian, German, and Swedish se reflexives are morphologically complex, and can figure in both the configurations of simplex zich and complex zichzelf in Dutch. The simple reflexive zich represents a spatiotemporal stage of its antecedent, thus disallowing dissociation readings that are available for the complex self-reflexive. The apparent lack of complementarity between pronoun and self-form in snake-sentences is related to the double-faced syntactic behavior of the Axpart projection of the locative preposition.

The chapter empirically sorts out morphological alternations often grouped together under the label causativization. A careful analysis of Japanese versus Hungarian morphological causatives reveals new evidence that the former must be formed in the syntax, while the latter have to be derived before any syntactic structure is available, that is, in the lexicon. The chapter then specifies and contrasts the formation of morphological causatives in the syntax and in the lexicon.

This chapter is concerned with criticisms of early case grammar (including phenomena to do with ‘holisticness’), particularly defences of ‘deep structure’ and its lexical role. It presents earlier arguments against the notion of ‘unaccusativity’ as unitary and as resolving various lexical and syntax problems in non-case-grammars, against the lexical relevance to the lexicon of grammatical relations or the configurations that define them, and against non-case-grammar formulations of syntactic processes, such as ‘raising’. It comments on the belated recognition of semantic relations as ‘thematic relations’ in the main transformational tradition, and the uncertainty of their role in linguistic formulations. It is argued that contrary to this tardy and grudging recognition, the motivations offered for a level of ‘deep structure’, including so-called ‘subject/object asymmetries’, could already be seen to be inadequate at an early stage.

This chapter shows that the Auxiliary Selection Hierarchy provides a generalization that captures the systematic variation exhibited by intransitive verbs in their choice of auxiliary across a number of languages. By doing so, it offers a stronger empirical basis to a range of observations and data that had been presented in the literature on split intransitivity. The ASH also accounts for the developmental paths followed by second-language learners of Italian and French, who start acquiring auxiliary selection from core verbs and are more likely to retain non-native intuitions with respect to non-core verbs at advanced stages of development. Further research is needed to corroborate the still limited evidence that the ASH may underlie not only auxiliary selection but also other syntactic reflexes of split intransitivity.

Unaccusative diagnostics come in two types. Ne-cliticization, there-insertion, and locative inversion count as diagnostics of surface unaccusativity; auxiliary selection and the resultative construction are diagnostics of deep unaccusativity. This chapter deals with one of the diagnostics of the latter type: the resultative construction. This construction is said to be indicative of unaccusativity because only the object can be predicated by the resultative XP. The chapter is organized as follows. Section 10.2 introduces serial verb constructions. Section 10.3 discusses unaccusative verbs and their relevance for the structure of serial verb constructions. Section 10.4 examines passives. Section 10.5 concerns the status of the ‘shared’ object. Finally, the analysis is presented in Section 10.6.

This introductory chapter begins with a discussion of issues in the study of the unaccusative hypothesis. It then discusses phenomena which have been taken to be sensitive to unaccusativity, unaccusativity mismatches, and the lexicon-syntax interface. An overview of the subsequent chapters is presented.

Since its original formulation, the unaccusative hypothesis has played a major role in linguistic theory, as it raises fundamental questions on the nature of grammatical relations and on the syntax-semantics map. The central idea at the basis of the Unaccusative Hypothesis is that the surface subject of a class of intransitives really is, at some level, an object. This chapter outlines an explicit (truth-conditional) semantics for unaccusatives and explores its consequences for syntax. It takes the moves from Burzio's proposal concerning the syntactic structures associated with unaccusatives and provides a semantics for such structures. It argues that this semantics sheds light on phenomena previously unaccounted for (pertaining to the interaction of unaccusatives and reflexives and to aspectual properties of unaccusatives) and leads to a new formulation of the aux-selection process in Italian, superior to the options currently available.

‘Unaccusative syntax’ is understood as referring to cases in which an external argument is not projected. Unaccusative syntax is found both in unaccusatives in the standard sense, as well as in passives, which are syntactically intransitive in lacking an external argument, but nevertheless agentive. The structural factor uniting these contexts, the absence of an external argument, underlies a number of cross-linguistically common syncretisms—that is, cases of identical morphological realization in distinct syntactico-semantic contexts. Syncretisms of this type, in which disparate syntactic constructions show ‘the same’ or similar morphology, are crucial to the understanding of the manner in which syntax and morphology relate to each other and to other parts of the grammar. Much of the chapter is devoted to showing the role that unaccusative syntax plays in defining such syncretisms as those mentioned. Section 5.2 discusses the importance of the unaccusative analysis of reflexives in the analysis of patterns such as that alluded to above. Section 5.3 discusses the nature of the morphological syncretism that centres on unaccusative syntax, and shows that it arises by morphology being sensitive to the absence of an external argument. Section 5.4 discusses alternatives to the analysis presented in sections 5.2 and 5.3, while Section 5.5 concludes.

This chapter contends that the arguments that led linguists to the unaccusative approach can all be handled by a version of the more traditional view that takes reflexive verbs to be unergative predicates. Moreover, it shows that when reflexives are submitted to syntactic tests of unaccusativity, they systematically fail the tests in a variety of languages. More specifically, their subject does not pattern with internal arguments. The morphological similarity often attested between reflexives and unaccusatives is not due to a common argument structure, but to the basic operation at the heart of their derivation. The chapter is organized as follows. Section 6.2 rejects the possibility that reflexive clitics are object clitics. Section 6.3 discusses the operation of reduction, which is the operation that derives reflexive verbs. Section 6.4 examines and discards the arguments advanced by proponents of the unaccusative analysis in favour of their approach. Section 6.5, in turn, provides cross-linguistic evidence that the subject of reflexive verbs is not an internal argument. The last section shows how the distinctions between reflexive verbs in Hebrew, Dutch, and English vs. Romance can be straightforwardly accounted for if reflexives can be derived either in the lexicon or in syntax.

In German, anticausatives are either unaccusative or transitive reflexive. This chapter focuses on the latter, which are discussed in the context of other interpretations of transitive reflexive sentences (TRSs). In addition to the anticausative interpretation, TRSs also yield a reflexive, a middle, and an inherent-reflexive interpretation. This semantic ambiguity of TRSs is systematic and can be found in many other Indo-European languages. The chapter is organized as follows. Section 7.2 provides a brief overview of the basic properties of anticausatives and embeds reflexive anticausatives in the wider context of other TRSs. Section 7.3 argues for a different and, until now, new way of deriving TRSs. Section 7.4 turns to unaccusatives again. The final section briefly summarizes the main findings.

This chapter discusses two syntactic configurations in Russian that are restricted to transitive and unaccusative verbs. These constructions show evidence of syntactic unaccusativity; that is, of a syntactic encoding of whatever lexical feature is the basis of the distinction between unaccusative and unergative verbs. Sections 8.2 and 8.3 are devoted to the first diagnostic context: distributive po-phrases. The second diagnostic context involves telic aspectuality and Russian aspectual morphology. The relevance of telic aspectuality and the role of the internal argument for the Russian aspectual system is laid out in Section 8.4. Section 8.5 extends its application by focusing on the derivation of imperfective forms of verbs as a diagnostic for the presence of an internal argument, and therefore of an unaccusative verb in the case of intransitivity. Section 8.6 argues for a way of using this test to identify underived unaccusative verbs. Section 8.7 addresses the issue of identifying specific linking rules that are active in Russian. The conclusions are summarized in Section 8.8.

This chapter discusses the syntax of simplex reflexives. It argues that simplex reflexives should be analysed on a par with possessive pronouns occurring in contexts of inalienable possession. Concretely, simplex reflexives are merged as the Possessum in a possessive constituent that also hosts its antecedent, the Possessor. Following Den Dikken (2006), the Possessum is merged in a position that is hierarchically higher than the Possessor. In this configuration, the reflexive Possessum is a probe c-commanding its goal, the Possessor-antecedent. The reflexive Possessum values its φ-features in an Agree relation with the Possessor, thus deriving Binding. Finally, it is shown that the constituent containing the Possessor and the Possessum is the internal argument of an unaccusative verb.

The goal of this introduction is threefold. Firstly, it overviews the core issues and challenges at the lexicon-syntax interface, thus setting the stage for the appearance of the Theta system of Reinhart (1991, 1996, 2000, 2002 et seq.) Secondly, in broad strokes, it demonstrates how the system deals (away) with the thematic roles as primitives, addresses the issue of verbal alternations and the gaps that exist in the paradigm, and, as illustrated by some of the most notorious instances of mapping puzzles, tackles the linking of the semantic categories to syntax. Last but not least, it provides summaries of the contributions to this volume. The contributions themselves examine the underpinnings, explore the advantages, and suggest further developments and improvements of the Theta system.

Structured tasks and the analysis of spontaneous speech are brought to show that children younger than 2 years acquiring Hebrew and European Portuguese distinguish between unaccusatives and unergatives. The evidence shows that children construct A-chains, arguing against the unergative misanalysis of unaccusatives, and in favour of early acquisition of unaccusatives.

Prepositions are either basic lexical items, compounds, or lexicalized expressions. They denote various relations, such as location, direction to or from, time, manner, or more abstract relations. Prepositional phrases used as adverbial complements have an external argument which may raise to become the subject of a copula or the object of a transitive verb, or the subject or object of an unaccusative verb. A preposition may take its complement in a form of a DP, another PP, or a CP, or it may be intransitive. This is what prepositions have in common with verbs and adjectives. Some words that are traditionally called adverbs are here categorized as intransitive prepositions. Prepositions may be modified by words or phrases of various categories, such as adjectives in the neuter, adverbs, or measure phrases.

This chapter presents evidence from Vietnamese and English concerning the distribution and interpretation of “unaccusative” vs. “unergative” predicates in two different constructions: analytic causatives and (present) participial constructions, respectively. These data are adduced in support of three related claims. The first is that the semantically continuous notion of causativity is cashed out syntactically in terms of three discrete argument positions, notably an intermediate position directly associated with what is here termed Inadvertent Cause (IC). Secondly, it is argued that unaccusativity (unergativity) is a compositional property of particular syntactic derivations, with thematic relations being read off different specifier-head configurations, as proposed by e.g. Hale and Keyser (1993). The third claim is that an event-related property distinguishes unaccusatives from unergatives, contrary to proposals in the literature identifying telicity as the source of the distinction (e.g. van Hout 2004).

This chapter discusses the intricate morphosyntax of accusative case in Russian in light of the book’s proposal that accusative represents verb features copied onto the verb’s dependents. A subtle distinction is observed among (1) elements that receive accusative marking, (2) elements that are not permitted to receive accusative, and (3) elements that receive accusative but realize it with a null morpheme. Prepositions that appear to assign accusative are discussed, and evidence is offered for a verbal component to their syntax. Interactions with unaccusativity and passive motivate a refinement of the rule of Feature Assignment, and several residual problems are noted.

The final chapter brings together the syntactic structure of nominals as discussed in Part I and the model of complex word formation, as discussed in Part II. Synthetic Compounds, although prima facie consisting of a verbal nexus and an argument of the verb, nonetheless are extremely problematic for all syntactic accounts of word formation. Contra Borer and others, they appear to have an internal argument without event structure. Contra Marantz and others, they allow N-ing without an event structure either. And finally, any attempt to derive them by assuming the incorporation of an internal argument is directly incompatible with the unaccusative hypothesis. In a careful analysis, it is shown that Synthetic Compounds cannot be considered a species of AS-nominals, that they do not have event structure and that what appears as an argument is but a free-interpretation modifier. Most strikingly, if Synthetic Compounds are not AS-nominals, but rather R-nominals, we expect them to allow non-compositional Content matching, and as such, to differ sharply from AS-nominals. The prediction, in turn, is directly correct (e.g. ‘shop lifting’ vs. ‘*;the lifting of the shop’). What we have here, then, is the non-trivial correlation of the absence of event structure and event interpretation with the availability of atomic Content, for Synthetic Compounds, contrasted with the presence of event structure and the obligatoriness of compositional Content for AS-nominals. This provides direct evidence for the correlation of Content matching with the absence of ExP-segments, for the requirement of ExP-segments for event interpretation to emerge, and by extension, for the syntactic derivation of complex words.