Past Event

“The nature of active-stative alignment”

Dr. Andrés Salanova
(University of Ottawa)

In the generative tradition, active-stative or split S systems have been often assumed to be systems where the morphology manifests directly the contrast between unaccusative and unergative intransitive verbs. In other traditions, where the distinction between unaccusatives and unergatives is not acknowledged, it is nevertheless assumed that active and stative verbs transparently reflect semantic categories.

In this talk, we consider data from several languages, primarily from the Chaco and eastern Brazilian highlands, to argue two points: first, that active-marking and stative-marking verbs do not correspond well to what we would like to consider unergative and unaccusative verbs based on other criteria, such as behavior under causativization; second, that active and stative are structural cases, dissociated from thematic roles; in particular, we examine cases of A-movement triggered by valency changing morphology and by raising predicates, where a moved element appears in the stative case even though it was presumably not generated as an internal argument.

We conclude the paper with some reflections on the nature of transitive verbs in languages with active-stative typology.

About the Presenter

Dr. Andrés Salanova (PhD MIT 2007) teaches linguistics at the University of Ottawa. He works at the interfaces of syntax, morphology, and phonology, with a focus on locality domains, argument structure, and modality. He has done extensive fieldwork on the languages of the Brazilian highlands.

* This event is sponsored by the School of Linguistics and Language Studies