The remarks which follow pertain to a particular facet of a generallexicographic
study of verbal diathesis currently being undertaken in connection with
the Lexicon Project of the Center for Cognitive Science at MIT. The overall aim
of the project is to design lexical entries, primarily for predicators, which will
express the linguistic knowledge which a speaker of a given languag~ possesses
in relation to lexical items. Our more limited purpose in this paper is to discuss
certain alternations in the syntax of English verbs, specifically, alternations in
transitivity which are not reflected by corresponding alternations in morphological
form. The aim, in general, is to determine the minimum which must be
said in a lexical entry in order to account for this particular aspect of English
lexical knowledge. And our methodological approach is one which seeks, where
possible, to rely solely upon principles which have been shown to be independently
necessary within a well articulated general theory of grammar, in this instance,
the theory developed in ~homsky's Lectures on Government and Binding
(1981) and in a variety of publications since. The ideas which we employ in this
discussion are, for the most part, ideas which are around, in the literature and
in unpublished papers and discussions, and we wish to apologize in advance for
the almost inevitable occasions in which we will fail properly to attribute them
to their true originators.
In the first section of the paper, a certain amount of descriptive apparatus
is set up to account for the observed syntactic behavior of selected English verb
types. In the second and third sections, we set- about dismantling this apparatus,
in so far as we can, in an effort to arrive at an understanding of thefundamental
grammatical elements involved. This is a preliminary -version of our work,
and assumptions ·made early in the paper will be contradicted, intentionally, in
later parts. Our terminological usage in this preliminary version is also somewhat
inconsistent. Thus, for example, we first use the terms ergative and unaccusative
interchangeably. Later,. however, we will'distinguish "ergatives" (like break,
operz etc.) which have transitive and intransitive uses, from "unaccusatives', (like
appear, arrive, arise, etc.), which have only the intransitive use but also allow
There-Insertion..There are other rough spots in the exposition which we will attempt
to eliminate in later version