Unaccusatives versus Unergatives in English (Class Exercise -- graduate Syntax I)

Objective: To learn the syntax of unacusative and unergative verbs in English through a hands-on fieldwork activity, conducted during one class period. The material in this exercise comes from Levin and Rappaport 1995.

Methodology: To do this exercise, you should use Google to search the internet for example sentences. But you cannot consult any linguistic sources (e.g., papers, books, websites), nor can you search linguistic terms like “unaccusative” or “secondary predicate”, nor can you use Chatgpt to ask analytical questions. For background on the method, see:

https://ordinaryworkinggrammarian.blogspot.com/2023/03/internet-searches-as-tool-in-syntactic.html

Format: Students break up into small groups of three to four people. All groups will do part 1. Some groups will do parts 2-3, and other groups will do parts 4-6. Each group should designate a scribe to collect their example sentences, which they will send to me after class (include URLs for your examples). When the groups finish, they present their results to the class.

Part 1: Each small group should find three to five example sentences containing depictive secondary predicates and three to five example sentences containing resultative secondary predicates. Each example should have a different secondary predicate. What kinds of generalizations can be made about the secondary predicates found?

Part 2: Find at least one example sentence of each of the following types. What kinds of generalizations can be made?

a. depictive modifying object of transitive verb

b. depictive modifying subject of transitive verb

c. resultative modifying object of transitive verb

d. resultative modifying subject of transitive verb

Part 3: Draw tree diagrams for the sentences from part 2 (four sentences).

Part 4: Come up with a list of 5 unaccusative verbs and 5 unergative verbs. On what basis did you classify the verbs? What kinds of generalizations distinguish the two verb classes?

Part 5: Using some of the verbs from part 4, find at least one example sentence of each of the following types. What kinds of generalizations can be made?

a. depictive modifying subject of unergative verb

b. resultative modifying subject of unergative verb

c. depictive modifying subject of unaccusative verb

d. resultative modifying subject of unaccusative verb

Part 6: Draw a tree diagram for the sentences from part 5 (four sentences).