unaccusative en · ADJ
Pronunciation
- /ˌʌnəˈkjuːzətɪv/ (UK, US)
Etymology
Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *né Proto-Indo-European *n̥- Proto-Germanic *un- Proto-West Germanic *un- Old English un- Middle English un- English un- Proto-Indo-European *h₂éd Proto-Italic *ad Proto-Italic *ad- Latin ad- Proto-Italic *kaussā Old Latin caussa Latin causa Proto-Indo-European *-h₂ Proto-Indo-European *-éh₂ Proto-Indo-European *-yéti Proto-Indo-European *-eh₂yéti Proto-Indo-European *-h₂tiinflu. Proto-Italic *-ājō Proto-Italic *-āō Latin -ō Latin accūsō Proto-Indo-European *-wós Proto-Indo-European *-iHwósder. Latin -īvus Ancient Greek αἰτῐᾱτῐκή (aitĭātĭkḗ)calq. Latin accūsātīvusder. Anglo-Norman accusatifbor. ▲ Latin accūsātīvusder. Middle French acusatifbor. ▲ Latin accūsātīvusbor. Middle English accusative English accusative English unaccusative From un- + accusative, from the fact that in a nominative-accusative language, the accusative case, which marks the direct object of a transitive verb, typically marks the non-volitional role. In unaccusative verbs, the non-volitional arguments do not take the accusative case.
Meanings
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(not-comparable, of a verb) Intransitive and having an experiencer as its subject, that is, the (syntactic) subject is not a (semantic) agent.
The light-verb analysis sketched here also offers us a way of accounting for the fact that in Early Modern English, the perfect auxiliary used with unaccusative verbs was be (as we saw in §7.6), whereas that used with transitive and unergative verbs was have.
2004, Andrew Radford, Minimalist Syntax: Exploring the structure of English, University Press, Cambridge, United Kingdom: Press Syndicate of the University of Cambridge, →ISBN, →OCLC, §9.6, page 352:
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Translations (3)
hu unakkuzatív (intransitive and having an experiencer as its subject, that is, the (syntactic) subject is not a (semantic) agent) · es inacusativo (intransitive and having an experiencer as its subject, that is, the (syntactic) subject is not a (semantic) agent) · pl nieakuzatywny (intransitive and having an experiencer as its subject, that is, the (syntactic) subject is not a (semantic) agent)