Fluid transitivity and generalized semantic roles

This paper focuses on multiple-argument verbs in syntactically accusative and ergative languages which exhibit case (frame) alternations depending on the context in which they occur and proposes that those verbs leave lexically underspecified how many macroroles they take. It further offers a comparison between the proposed account and Ackerman & Moore’s (2001) proto-role account and argues that those case (frame) alternations are better treated as macrorole/transitivity alternations than relational alternations.

Published online: 21 November 2008
https://doi.org/10.1075/slcs.105.10nak