The dissertation investigates verbs of (change of) state in Tamazight (Berber) from the perspective of their internal structure and its syntactic corollary, which corresponds to predicate-argument structure. The verbs investigated include verbs of quality, unaccusatives, spatial configuration verbs, and causatives. Verbs of quality refer to a special class of intransitive verbs occurring with accusative clitics when they indicate a pure state, and with nominative clitics when they indicate change of state. In the latter situation verbs of quality are undistinguished from unaccusatives.; I argue that while nominative clitics associated with verbs of quality surface in the subject position for EPP reasons, accusative clitics surfaces in the object position because the category T involved is defective, following an idea proposed by Chomsky (2001). This contradicts the view in Government and Binding Theory that intransitive verbs do not assign unaccusative Case.; I sustain that the pure state form has a monadic structure of the type [VBE[√ROOT]], while the inchoative form, like unaccusatives, is associated with the dyadic structure of the type [VCOME[V BE[√ROOT]]]. To account for the two different interpretations associated with the inchoative form I argue that its syntactic structure contains a scope operator with two different positions. When the operator has scope over VCOME, it yields change of state interpretation; when the operator has scope over VBE, the interpretation is stative (resultative).; Verbs of quality and unaccusatives are contrasted with verbs of spatial configuration which are analyzed as disguised reflexives, with a triadic structure of the type [VACT[VCOME[VBE([√ROOT])]]]. The reflexive interpretation results from the association of the internal argument with two thematic positions [Spec,VACT] and [Spec,V COME].; The structure postulated for causatives is of the type [VCAUSE [COME[VBE([√ROOT])]]]. I argue that lexical causatives have a basic structure while morphological causatives are derived by augmenting their unaccusative counterpart.; Lexical causatives are of two types. I argue that those lacking the unaccusative alternate have their lexical root conflated with the verb CAUSE, while unaccusative-alternating causatives have their lexical root conflated with the lower verbs (BE)COME. This idea is extended to account for the difference between unaccusative-alternating and non-alternating languages.
展开▼
