Aphasic evidence for the syntactic determination of unaccusativity
نویسنده
چکیده
In this paper I introduce some data from an aphasic patient who demonstrates a robust effect of grammatical class; he is unable to read any function words, and makes characteristic ‘within-category’ substitution errors. These errors extend to the class of unaccusative verbs, and this leads to a consideration of the functional nature of unaccusativity. Existing accounts of unaccusativity as a syntactic reflex of some semantic property are discussed, and a proposal for a syntactic account of unaccusativity is outlined. The aphasic deficit as we understand it seems to provide evidence in favour of a purely syntactic determination of unaccusativity.
منابع مشابه
Unaccusativity as lexical argument reduction: Evidence from aphasia
Theoretical approaches to unaccusativity have placed an emphasis on their derivation from underlyingly transitive predicates, which is assumed to involve argument reduction, possibly triggered by pre-syntactic affixation of some abstract morpheme. This paper presents some data from an aphasic subject who demonstrates a robust effect of grammatical class; he is unable to read any function words,...
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