Resultative Markedness and Implicational Hierarchies

This is because the former are lexically implicated or entailed, and thus are more available and less expensive than the latter in the sense that they involve less practical reasoning. In addition, in terms of the strong-weak distinction, an implicational universal can be posited, namely that if a language has strong resultatives, it must have weak resultatives as well (Washio 1999, 2002). Second, from a crosslinguistic point of view, the subject-oriented reading (of resultatives which involve an unergative or transitive causing predicate) (see (2)), the scare reading ((3)), and the surface unaccusative frame ((4)) found with Mandarin resultatives are all marked.