The Basque impersonal is a detransitivized construction that resembles middles, passives and impersonals. In this construction, the thematic object is the grammatical subject, which bears absolutive case and triggers absolutive agreement, and the auxiliary selected is izan ‘be’. At the same time, there is an implicit agent that is syntactically active even though it is not realized as an ergative argument with corresponding ergative agreement. In this article, we compare the Basque impersonal with the middle, the passive of languages like English, and subject-suppressing impersonals (as in Polish), and we show that it is more similar to the passive and subject-suppressing impersonals, given that (i) in the Basque impersonal, the event is instantiated, (ii) it can be used with more predicate classes, and (iii) it allows dative-marked second objects, among other properties. Similarly, like in English-type passives and subject-suppressing impersonals, the implicit agent of the Basque impersonal is syntactically active, as it can license agent-oriented modifiers and control adjunct purpose clauses. Nevertheless, there are other properties in which these constructions differ; for instance, the implicit agent must be interpreted as human, unlike in passives, and the grammatical subject cannot be other than 3rd person, something attested neither in passives nor in subject-suppressing impersonals. In light of this distribution, we consider the Basque impersonal to be located somewhere in between middles, passives and subject-suppressing impersonals as far as its syntactic properties are concerned.
This chapter provides an overview of ergative case and agreement in Basque by concentrating on their morphological and syntactic distribution as well as on their interaction with other aspects of verbal and nominal inflection, such as plurality, person morphology or Tense. This chapter carefully examines the event configurations in which ergative case and agreement are licensed in Basque by extending the discussion beyond the domain of verbal predicates to include non-verbal ones (nominal or adjectival). The most influential hypotheses concerning the status of ergative case and agreement in Basque are critically reviewed and their connection to more general approaches to ergativity is underlined. The chapter offers a synthetic view of the most relevant theoretical and descriptive contributions realized in the area of Basque ergativity during the last decennia.
This paper deals with a group of agentive verbs in Eastern dialects of Basque that show mixed unergative and unaccusative properties. Although they pattern with unergatives in certain aspects, they combine with an absolutive subject and the auxiliary 'be', contrary to what one would expect for Basque unergative verbs. Additionally, they behave like unaccusatives in a number of other tests, such as in their inability to take cognate objects and in allowing partitive subjects. The analysis put forward in this paper accounts for the hybrid nature of these verbs. In particular, we claim that their subject is introduced in the specifier of vP, and that it is coindexed with a thematic but non-pronounced argument of Voice. As a consequence, the subject shows both external and internal properties. This paper thus challenges the mutually exclusive external/internal division of the subject in intransitive verbs and argues that intransitive verbs can be classified into more groups than just two, as also argued elsewhere. Additionally, it argues that the different types of intransitive verbs are grammatically encoded and shaped by different versions of Voice and v. Thus, this analysis assumes the typology of Voice proposed by Schäfer (2008) and developed by Alexiadou, Anagnostopoulou and Schäfer (2015), and extends it to the functional head v.
In this paper, I analyze the form and meaning of adjectival participles in Basque, an ergative language with a predominant use of analytic verbal forms. I show that even though adjectival participles have similar morphological makeup, they can be the exponents of different aspectual configurations, with different interpretation and syntactic distribution. As attested for other languages such as English and Greek, Basque adjectival participles can be interpreted as stative or resultative (Embick 2004), and also as target state participles or resultant state participles (Kratzer 2000; Anagnostopoulou 2003). As noted in the literature (Anagnostopoulou 2003; Alexiadou & Anagnostopoulou 2008; Alexiadou et al. 2014; Alexiadou et al. 2015), these types are subject to different syntactic distribution, particularly regarding the acceptability of different sorts of event-related and subject-oriented modifiers. In this paper, I propose that a further aspectual class must be included into the typology of adjectival participles: experientials. In fact, adjectival participles in Basque can be interpreted experientially under certain conditions. The five-way typology of participles emerges as the result of the combination of two different aspectual heads (a stativizing Asp head, as in Kratzer 2000 and Embick 2004, and an aspectual operator with anteriority semantics, as in Kratzer 2000; Alexiadou et al. 2014; Alexiadou et al. 2015) with complements of different sizes and nature. In particular, the experiential reading arises when the Asp head of anteriority combines with particular vP semantics and/or with a particular linking relation between the subject of predication and the arguments within VOICEP.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.
hi@scite.ai
10624 S. Eastern Ave., Ste. A-614
Henderson, NV 89052, USA
Copyright © 2024 scite LLC. All rights reserved.
Made with 💙 for researchers
Part of the Research Solutions Family.