Unaccusative verb
Special kind of °intransitive verb.
Semantically, its subject does not actively initiate or is not actively responsible
for the action of the verb; rather, it has properties which it shares with the direct
object of a transitive verb (or better, with the grammatical subject of its passive
counterpart).
EXAMPLE: in English arrive, die and fall
are unaccusative verbs. Another term is ergative verb.
SYNTAX: verb that assigns no
°external theta-role and no structural
°Case. Its argument is in object position at
D-structure, but has to move to subject position in order to receive (nominative)
Case (from INFL). The syntactic behaviour of unaccusatives differs in various ways
from non-unaccusative intransitive verbs
(°unergatives). In languages that have a
distinction between the perfective auxiliaries 'to be' and 'to have', the
unaccusatives take 'to be', while the unergatives take 'to have'.
EXAMPLE: the Italian sentences in (i) and the Dutch sentences in (ii)
are examples.
(i) a ha telefonato Gianni
has telephoned G
b è arrivato Claudio
is arrived C
(ii) a Jan heeft getelefoneerd
J has telephoned
b Klaas is gearriveerd
K has arrived
Furthermore, unaccusatives cannot be passivized, as opposed to unergatives (in
languages with impersonal passives). This is shown by the contrast between the
Dutch (iii) and (iv).
(iii) er wordt door Jan getelefoneerd there is by J telephoned (iv) *er wordt door Klaas gearriveerd there is by K arrivedIn Italian, a further diagnostic to distinguish unaccusatives from unergatives is the possibility of ne-cliticization.
Underspecification
PHONOLOGY: the theory that underlying representations are not fully
specified i.c. that predictable information is not underlyingly present.
EXAMPLE: in English there is no lexical distinction between aspirated
and non-aspirated stops. Still there is a phonetic difference between the [p^h]
in [p^h]in and the non-aspirated [p] in s[p]in.
Underspecification theory expresses this by assuming that underlyingly both p's
are not specified for aspiration. The aspiration feature is later (post-lexically)
specified by a context-sensitive rule inserting [+spread glottis] at the beginning
of a syllable; the non-aspiration is a consequence of a universal rule which inserts
[-spread glottis] in all other contexts.
°Structure preservation,
°structure building rule.
Unergative verb
Special kind of °intransitive verb.
Semantically, unergative verbs have a subject perceived as actively initiating or
actively responsible for the action expressed by the verb.
EXAMPLE: in English run, talk and resign are unergative
verbs. In syntax, unergative verbs are characterized as verbs with an
°external argument. See
°unaccusative verb.
LIT.
Perlmutter & Postal (1984),
Burzio (1986).
Uniqueness
SEMANTICS: a distinguishing property of singular definite descriptions.
The sentence The present king of France is bald entails that there is a
king of France (existence) and that there is exactly one (uniqueness). A point of
debate has been the question whether existence and uniqueness should be treated as
part of the assertion (as Russell did) or as a presupposition (as Strawson proposed).
LIT.
Russell (1905),
Strawson (1950).
Unitary Base Hypothesis (UBH)
MORPHOLOGY: a hypothesis proposed by
Aronoff (1976) and
Scalise (1984)
which says that Word Formation Rules may only operate over a single type of
syntactically or semantically defined base. This means that there may be affixation
rules which attach an affix to the class of 'transitive verbs' or to the class of
'abstract nouns', but rules which attach an affix to both the class of 'Transite
verbs' and the class of 'abstract nouns' are ruled out.
Universal quantifier
SEMANTICS: a logical operator of predicate logic, written All, which
makes it possible to express that all entities in the
°universe of discourse have a
particular property. In (i), it is used to express that every entity has property P.
(i) All(x) [ P(x) ]It is a standard assumption that natural language expressions such as each girl and everyone contain (or are) universal quantifiers.
Universe of discourse
SEMANTICS: the set of entities we are talking about when using a sentence.
Also called domain of discourse.
EXAMPLE: in using (i)a the universe of discourse can be all human beings
(and the sentence is most certainly not true), or it may be a restricted set of
human beings (and the sentence may very well be true). In (i)b the universe of
discourse has been explicitly restricted by the adjunct in this room.
(i) a everyone is happy
b everyone in this room is happy
LIT.
Gamut (1991).
Upward monotonicity
SEMANTICS: a property of °determiners
and °quantifiers in
°Generalized Quantifier
Theory. A determiner D is left upward monotone (or left monotone
increasing or persistent), if D(A,B) implies D(A',B) where A' is a superset
of A. It is right upward monotone (or right monotone increasing) if D(A,B)
implies D(A,B'), where B subset B'. EXAMPLE: the D some is left
upward monotone and right upward monotone; see the validity of the implications in
(i) and (ii) respectively:
(i) If some dogs walked, then some animals walked. (ii) If some dogs walked rapidly, then some dogs walked.Because the interpretations of CN' and VP' are extensions of the interpretations of CN and VP respectively, the corresponding determiner or NP is also called closed under extension.