Transitivity and Split VP Shells in Unaccusative Constructions. Evidence from Jordanian Arabic

Abstract

The present study aims at providing a descriptive account of the unaccusative verbs in Jordanian Arabic dialect (henceforth, JA) in terms of Transitivity. It also aims at presenting empirical evidence to prove that a split projection analysis is appropriate for unaccusative predicates in JA in light of the Minimalist Approach (Chomsky, 1995, 2000). A sample consisting of 13 examples representing unaccusative constrictions in JA was collected from the daily utterances by the surrounding Jordanian family members, friends, and acquaintances or from the written comments posted by Jordanians in different Facebook pages. The findings of the study revealed that unaccusative constructions in Jordanian Arabic are alternating verbs. They are classified further into two subclasses; intransitive verbs which may have alternating transitive forms only with the use of the overt morphological markers, and intransitive verbs which may be of two forms; intransitive or transitive lexically i.e. without the use of any overt morphological markers. Furthermore, the findings showed that unaccusative constructions in JA are applied to the split hypothesis in that unaccusative verbs are presented in two VP shells; an outer vP and an inner VP shells. The pieces of evidence are based on the existence of the two internal arguments, the dual positions of the adverb of manner, and the account for the possibility of having two orders of the unaccusative's structure. The limitations of the study lie in the lack of the semantic analyses of the unaccusative verbs and the semantic conditions determining the possibility of having the alternating causative forms of unaccusative verbs in JA. Therefore, the study recommends conducting further research to investigate thoroughly the semantic conditions that determine the causative alternation for the unaccusative predicates in JA.