Basic English Syntax with Exercises

Burzio's Generalisation

5.2.3.1 Potential problems

There is a fairly robust generalisation, named after the linguist who first noted it, Luigi Burzio, that verbs which assign no Θ-role to their subjects, do not assign accusative Case to their objects. While Burzio’s Generalisation may offer a description of what is going on in these cases, it is an unfortunate fact that the generalisation has little in the way of explanatory content: why it should be that verbs that have no subjects cannot assign accusative Case is entirely mysterious from this perspective.

5.2.3.3 Unaccusatives and ergatives

Obviously, this light verb is not the same as the one we get in the causative construction as there is no causative interpretation here and no agent Θ-role assigned. In fact, this verb does not appear to have much of a meaning at all. But this might be an advantage in accounting for the other properties of the there construction. Recall Burzio’s generalisation: only a verb which assigns a Θ-role to its subject assigns an accusative Case. The causative light verb fits this restriction well: it assigns an agent Θ-role to its subject and an accusative Case to the theme in the specifier of the VP. If the abstract light verb in the there construction is restricted by this, then the fact that it assigns no Θ-role to the there subject, accounts for why we do not find simple accusative DPs in the theme position.

5.2.4.1 Evidence from passives

Interestingly, the passive is a construction which conforms to Burzio’s generalisation: the verb stops assigning a Θ-role to its subject and loses the ability to assign accusative to its object. But Burzio’s generalisation is a description of a state of affairs, it is not an explanation of that state of affairs. What we need is something that links the two properties. In previous examples we have seen a way to link the Θ-role assignment to the subject and the accusative Case assignment to the object: through the light verb which is assumed to do both:

6.3 Movement to Spec IP

We have said that the light verb which is responsible for assigning the Θ-role to the subject is responsible for assigning Case to the object. This seems to be the locus of Burzio’s generalisation that verbs which assign a subject Θ-role assign an accusative Case. Hence the object is in a Case marked position and need not move away in order to get Case. Consider the subject: why is it not in a Case position? Note that the verbal element above the subject, the tense in this case, does not assign any Θ-roles and hence its specifier position is empty at D-structure. Clearly this is unlike the light verb. We may propose therefore that tense is not an accusative Case assigning head. But why doesn’t the light verb assign Case to its subject? One might attempt to answer this by claiming that the light verb has to assign Case to the object and assuming that accusative Case can only be assigned to one place. While this seems reasonable, it doesn’t explain why the light verb taking an intransitive verb does not assign Case to its subject: