Hybrid intransitives in Basque

Abstract

This paper deals with a group of agentive verbs in Eastern dialects of Basque that show mixed unergative and unaccusative properties. Although they pattern with unergatives in certain aspects, they combine with an absolutive subject and the auxiliary ‘be’, contrary to what one would expect for Basque unergative verbs. Additionally, they behave like unaccusatives in a number of other tests, such as in their inability to take cognate objects and in allowing partitive subjects. The analysis put forward in this paper accounts for the hybrid nature of these verbs. In particular, we claim that their subject is introduced in the specifier of vP, and that it is co-indexed with a thematic but non-pronounced argument of Voice. As a consequence, the subject shows both external and internal properties. This paper thus challenges the mutually exclusive external/internal division of the subject in intransitive verbs and argues that intransitive verbs can be classified into more groups than just two, as also argued elsewhere. Additionally, it argues that the different types of intransitive verbs are grammatically encoded and shaped by different versions of Voice and v. Thus, this analysis assumes the typology of Voice proposed by Schäfer (2008) and developed by Alexiadou, Anagnostopoulou and Schäfer (2015), and extends it to the functional head v.

In the case of Anna Pineda, this work has been supported by a postdoctoral research fellowship from the Beatriu de Pinós program of Catalonia’s Department of Economy and Knowledge (2014 BP_A 00165), a Juan de la Cierva-Incorporación fellowship from Spain’s Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (IJCI-2016-30474), and research-project funding from the same ministry (FFI2014-56968-C4-1-P). In the case of Ane Berro, the author acknowledges the research funding received from the Basque Government (IT1169-19), the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities (PGC2018-096380-B-I00) and Agence National de la Recherche (ANR-17-CE27-0011-01).