Functional Projections and Event Structure

Abstract

The variable behavior verbs in unaccusative/unergative alternation in Dutch, Italian, and Hebrew led Borer(1993) to deny the "lexical-entrydriven approach. Following Van Valin(1990), she concludes that the unaccusative/unergative distinction is altogether not a syntactic one, but rather an aspectual/semantic one. Thus, for her, the distinction is completely dependent on the properties of the entire predicate, of which the meaning of the verb is just one part. In this paper, we point out some theoretical problems in Borer(1993)'s radical suggestion and suggest a solution.