LINGUIST List 7.2

Mon Jan 1 1996

Disc: Levin & Rappaport Hovav (1995)

Editor for this issue: Anthony M. Aristar <aristartam2000.tamu.edu>

Directory

  • Stanley Dubinsky, Reply to review of Levin and Rappaport
  • Alexis Manaster Ramer, Re: 6.1786, Disc: Levin & Rappaport Hovav (1995)

    Message 1: Reply to review of Levin and Rappaport

     Date: Wed, 27 Dec 1995 14:31:18 EST
    From: Stanley Dubinsky <DUBINSKUNIVSCVM.CSD.SCAROLINA.EDU>
    Subject: Reply to review of Levin and Rappaport
    Since noone else has yet done so, I would like to correct a mistaken claim put forward in Sebastian Shaumyan's review of Levin and Rappaport Hovav 1995, and to ameliorate the terminological frustration and confusion that a number of list members have expressed.

    First off, the mistake. Professor Shaumyan claims (in his Dec 18, 1995 review) the following (underscoring is my own):

    > Let me turn to another point. On page 120 of the book, the >authors, following the studies of Lyons, claim that verbs of existence >are dyadic. The argumentation in support of this claim is convincing. >This is a correct claim. But if we recognize this claim we cannot >consider verbs of existence to be unaccusative verbs because unaccusative >verbs are monadic by definition. To solve this difficulty, the authors propose >that verbs of existence take two internal arguments rather than one >external and one internal. In chapter 4, they present detailed >arguments in support of their proposal. > > Granted that we agree with the authors' proposal >that verbs of existence have two internal arguments, this does not >solve our difficulties, because unaccusative verbs are intransitive > -------------------------------------------- >verbs, and intransitive verbs are monadic as recognized by RG. Unless we >-------------------------------------------------------------- >arbitrarily stretch the concept of intransitive verbs, we cannot consider >intransitive verbs to be dyadic.

    This is not correct. The formal definition of "transitive" (see Rosen 1984, p. 42) characterizes a "transitive stratum" (n.b. strata are characterized as transitive or not -- not clauses) as "one that contains a 1-arc (SUBJECT) and a 2-arc (OBJECT)". Thus, an intransitive stratum is by definition: one which lacks a 1-arc (SUBJECT), a 2-arc (OBJECT), or both. An "unaccusative" stratum is one that is defined as having a 2-arc (OBJECT) and no 1-arc (SUBJECT). Now, to translate Levin and Rappaport's proposal into RG terms, they might say that a dyadic verb of existence has a DIRECT OBJECT and an INDIRECT OBJECT (or an OBJECT and a LOCATIVE). In either case, by virtue of having an OBJECT and no SUBJECT, verbs of existence ARE most definitely unaccusative.

    Reference: Rosen, Carol. 1984. The interface between semantic roles and initial grammatical relations. In David Permutter and Carol Rosen (eds), Studies in Relational Grammar 2. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. pp. 38-77

    Frustration with the terms "unergative" and "unaccusative" was expressed in the following messages:

    >Date: Thu, 21 Dec 1995 22:04:07 CST >From: pdanielspress-gopher.uchicago.edu (Peter Daniels) >Subject: Re: 6.1763, Disc: Levin & Rappaport Hovav (1995) > >A further difficulty with the "term" *unergative* is that in contemporary >theory *ergative* is used in ways that seem to have nothing to do with the >original sense of the term (for which see Dixon's book by that name).

    >Date: Fri, 22 Dec 1995 00:22:59 EST >From: shaumyanminerva.cis.yale.edu (Sebastian Shaumyan) >Subject: Re: 6.1763, Disc: Levin & Rappaport Hovav (1995) > >I must confess I cannot understand why RG uses such weird terms. I look >at these terms simply as lables of certain concepts. Taken simply as lables, >these terms are clear.

    The first and most enjoyable cure for this confusion would be for the afflicted to read:

    Pullum, Geoffrey. 1991. Citation etiquette beyond Thunderdome. In The Great Eskimo Vocabulary Hoax and Other Irreverent Essays on the Study of Language. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. pp. 147-158. (also appears in Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 6.579-588.)

    For those who don't have ready access to this remedy, the terms "unaccusative" and "unergative" were coined by Geoff Pullum in a letter to Paul Postal in 1976. These terms were constructed from already familiar notions of grammatical case. In some languages (Nominative-Accusative), the object of a transitive clause is marked with Accusative case. Thus, Pullum proposed that a stratum containing an object but no subject should be called UNaccusative. In other languages (Ergative-Absolutive), the subject of a transitive clause is marked with Ergative case. Pullum's proposed term for a stratum with a subject but no object was UNergative.

    Some of the current and ongoing confusion with these terms arises from the fact that Luigi Burzio, in his 1981 MIT dissertation, refers to Unaccusative predicates as "ergative" and to Unergative predicates as "intransitive". Pullum refers to this re-nomenclature as "a truly crackbrained piece of terminological revisionism". However, if Burzio's terminology muddied the waters some, the ad hoc manner (per ignorance and intellectual sloth) in which others have mixed up both sets of terms is particularly unforgivable (you know who you are). Notice that Burzio, in reserving "intransitive" for predicates with an underlying SUBJECT but no OBJECT, had left no cover term for monadic predicates. Dissatisfied with this state of affairs, but unwilling to wholly abandon the more "fashionable" term, Ergative, some linguists in the mid-1980s took to using Ergative in contrast to Unergative, reserving in this way the term Intransitive for the union of the two sets.

    The Pullum-Postal Terminology:

    INTRANSITIVE can be either:

    UNERGATIVE (has a SUBJECT and no OBJECT), or UNACCUSATIVE (has an OBJECTand no SUBJECT)

    The Burzio Terminology:

    INTRANSITIVE (has a SUBJECT and no OBJECT), or ERGATIVE (has an OBJECTand no SUBJECT)

    Terms for the Fashionably Confused:

    INTRANSITIVE can be either:

    UNERGATIVE (has a SUBJECT and no OBJECT), or ERGATIVE (has an OBJECTand no SUBJECT)

    I hope that this clarifies the issue somewhat. - Stan Dubinsky Linguistics Program University of South Carolina

    Message 2: Re: 6.1786, Disc: Levin & Rappaport Hovav (1995)

    Date: Mon, 25 Dec 1995 16:57:38 EST
    From: Alexis Manaster Ramer <amrCS.Wayne.EDU>
    Subject: Re: 6.1786, Disc: Levin & Rappaport Hovav (1995)
    Yes, I agree with Scott DeLancey that Sapir should also be mentioned when one talks about unaccusative/active constructions, and I am very grateful for the references he has posted and which I had missed (egg-on face) of American linguists who do cite Klimov, although I still think there should be more awareness of each other's work. I was actually just doing a review of a Soviet linguistics encyclopedia which has Klimov's "aktivnyj stroj" (which I am not at all happy translating as "active system", with apologies to Prof. Shaumyan) but not to unaccusativity, and Ihave seen references in works of Winfred Lehmann to Klimov's theory which suggest that he assumes that no one in the West knows of these phenomena. I must say I dissent from Prof. Shaumyan's statement, if I understood it correctly, that the whole of Klimov's theory is concerned with his hypotheses about the evolution of nominative (=accusative), ergative, and active(=unaccusative) systems, although those are some of the more controversial and in my own view objectionable of his proposals. Finally, Peter Daniels is not quite right about the term "ergative". As I have recently shown, its original sense was NOT that found in authors such as Dixon, and its etymology incidentally has nothing to do with Greek ergate:s 'worker'. But I do agree that that is the only usage which should be promoted, since anything else would just lead to endless confusion, as indeed is already happening. Alexis MR