Spanish Unaccusative Construction and Phase

Abstract

In unaccusative constructions, the functional head T establishes an Agree relation with a noun phrase that carries a theme theta role. Previous analyses of them have relied on additional assumptions such as categorizing the vP phase as strong or weak and delaying the timing of transfer. In this paper, we present an alternative analysis that naturally avoids the formation of a phase during derivation by utilizing the concept of external pair-merge proposed by Epstein et al.(2016). Building on this perspective, we conduct a comparative analysis of the syntactic characteristics exhibited in unaccusative constructions and transitive constructions. We provided evidence by showing that a floated quantifier associated with the object can remain in-situ within unaccusative constructions and nominative case is assigned in the object position without movement. Furthermore, inspired by the discussions put forth by McGinnis (2004) and Den Dikken (2022) concerning unaccusative constructions with dative arguments, we put forward the proposition that ApplP, positioned above v*P, functions as a phase, forming a complete structure of predicate and arguments.