Auxiliary selection is paradoxical: categorical for some verb classes, indeterminate for others; inconsistent across languages; and misaligned with other diagnostics. After critiquing one solution to the paradox, the Auxiliary Selection Hierarchy (Sorace 2000), we propose an alternative: Parameterized Linking, which approaches the semantic underpinnings of the unaccusative/unergative distinctio...

Previous work shows that children use syntactic information to guide their hypotheses about verb meaning. Bunger & Lidz 2004 demonstrated that 2-year-olds map novel unaccusative verbs onto just the result subevent of a complex causative event and novel transitive verbs onto the entire causative event. We present data from a new preferential looking study demonstrating that 2-year-olds map novel...

This study investigates the knowledge of unaccusativity in Japanese native, heritage, and second/foreign language speakers with respect to licensing of floating numeral quantifiers (FNQs) by unaccusative and unergative subjects (the FNQ diagnostic). Two acceptability judgment experiments were conducted to examine (i) whether and how judgments of the three populations differ with respect to the ...

The present study examines the uses of the reflexive marker in Lusaamia, a Bantu language of Kenya. In addition to being a true reflexive, the reflexive verbal prefix is also used in indirect reflexive constructions, as a middle voice / stative marker, and also to indicate when an action is being done for no particular purpose (when used in conjunction with a causative marker). I show that unac...

This paper is intended to justify the classification of all the Russian prefixes into lexical and superlexical. It gives semantic and syntactic criteria for distinguishing between the two groups, including: the idiosyncratic or spatial lexical meaning versus operator-like function; the (in)ability to measure over objects and events; the (in)ability to stack; the (in)ability of a host verb to fo...

This study investigates three factors that have been argued to define "canonical form" in sentence comprehension: Syntactic structure, semantic role, and frequency of usage. We first examine the claim that sentences containing unaccusative verbs present difficulties analogous to those of passive sentences. Using a plausibility judgment task, we show that a mixed group of aphasics performed sign...