Unaccusativity as lexical argument reduction: Evidence from aphasia

Abstract

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, and makes characteristic 'within-category' substitution errors. These errors extend to the class of unaccusative verbs, and this leads to a consideration of the potentially functional nature of the morphological trigger for unaccusativity. Existing accounts of unaccusative deficits in aphasia, and of the likely morphosyntactic representation of unaccusative verbs are discussed. The aphasic deficit, as we understand it, seems to provide evidence in support of the functional determination of unaccusativity. #

Exploring the discourse-syntax and the lexicon-syntax interfaces in language pathology

“…In order to confirm her hypothesis Froud (2006) presents data from an English-speaking agrammatic patient. The specific subject demonstrated a specific pattern of performance characterized by a robust dissociation between substantive and functional categories in the single-word reading modality.…”

“…Literature Review -Lexicon Syntax Interface 100 Froud's (2006) single-case study also provides evidence in favour of the deficient production of anti-causative verbs by Broca's aphasics, yet, she accounts for it in terms of a grammatical reduction of some formal features implemented in the morphological component where unaccusativity on verbal predicates is assumingly specified. More specifically, following the spirit of Pesetsky's (1995) analysis, Froud claims that both alternating and non-alternating anti-causative predicates result from an underlying causative representation which is the same as that for a transitive verb with positions for an internal and an external argument.…”

“…The anti-causative reading emerges from the suppression of the external theta role of the verb by means of the lexical predicate's adjunction to some argumentstructure-changing functional head labelled UNACC. This adjoining process according to Froud (2006) takes place at an isolable morphological component (akin to the Morphology Interface of Smith & Tsimpli, 1995) whose role is to specify the featurally neutral representations of categories by assigning them a morphological realization before they reach the syntactic component. As such, an anti-causative verb exists as a categorically distinct functional head in the UG lexicon, but its features are not specified until it reaches the level of the morphological component, where unaccusativity is realized on the verb.…”

“…As such, an anti-causative verb exists as a categorically distinct functional head in the UG lexicon, but its features are not specified until it reaches the level of the morphological component, where unaccusativity is realized on the verb. According to Froud (2006) the pre-syntactic identification and selection of the UNACC functional head by an originally transitive substantive verb implicates that anti-causative verbs should be classified and treated as functional heads 24 .…”

“…24 Froud (2006) further speculates on the derivation of alternating verbs with an anti-causative and a transitive variant by assuming that the adjunction of the originally causative verb to the UNACC functional head is optional. This would mean that the structure projected can either be a functional one (the intransitive anti-causative form) or an extended projection with a lexical head (the transitive/causative form).…”