Voice Morphology in the Causative–Inchoative Alternation: Evidence for a Non-Unified Structural Analysis of Unaccusatives

Abstract

This chapter argues that the patterns of voice morphology can be accounted for if there are at least three structures involved in the formation of anticausatives in Greek. It proposes that anticausatives are formed on the basis of an intransitive vBecome/Result which embeds either an AdjectiveP, or a VoiceP, or a possessive construction. The chapter is structured as follows. Section 4.2 presents the factual background for our discussion, namely the distribution of ‘special’ morphology on the intransitive variants of alternating verbs. Section 4.3 presents theoretical assumptions and an explanation that has been proposed in the literature for the distribution of this special morphology. Section 4.4 turns to a discussion of the Greek verb classes and considers the morphological patterns these exhibit. Sections 4.5 and 4.6 discuss the regularities that emerge from the distribution of ‘special’ morphology in Greek and offer an explanation for the differences among the various patterns.

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