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Unaccusativity and the VP node in Cayuga

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 January 2016

Michael Barrie
Michael Barrie*
Affiliation:
Sogang University, Seoul
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Extract

In this squib, I discuss the iterative marker in Cayuga (Northern Iroquoian) and how it helps us to understand VP structure and unaccusativity in that language. This discussion bears directly on the issue of configurationality and clausal structure (Hale 1983, Jelinek 1984, Baker 1996, Legate 2002). A fundamental question about discourse-configurational languages is whether they have a distinct VP node or a flat structure. I show that the iterative marker takes scope over objects but not over subjects, supporting the notion that a distinct VP node is present in this language. Furthermore, I show that the iterative marker also takes scope over the subjects of unaccusatives, thus distinguishing unaccusatives from unergatives.

Type
Squibs/Notules
Information
Canadian Journal of Linguistics/Revue canadienne de linguistique , Volume 59 , Issue 2 , July 2014 , pp. 235 - 242
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Linguistic Association. 2015

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