| In contrast to a general assumption that intransitive verbs do not allow any object or complement types, this dissertation provides evidence of the transitive use of intransitive verbs in English. The transitivized constructions fall into two syntactic patterns. The sole-complement type includes cognate object, reaction object, and creation object constructions. The second pattern involves those with secondary predicates which are caused-motion, resultative and way constructions. The behavior of nine unergative verbs from three different verb classes is examined: verbs of manner of motion, verbs of sound, and verbs of non-verbal expression, together with five unaccusative verbs in these transitivized constructions. Based on both lexicographical data and corpus data from the Brown corpora and the Proquest Newspaper database, it is demonstrated that the occurrences of transitivized intransitives has to be explained both in terms of syntax and semantics.; The research findings confirm the validity of Case Theory (Chomsky, 1981), the Unaccusative Hypothesis (Perlmutter, 1978), and Burzio's Generalization (Burzio, 1986). Only a sub-class of intransitive verbs, the so-called unergative verbs, can appear in transitivized constructions. Apparent counter-examples are discussed. The aspectual analysis of the transitive use of intransitive verbs shows that the augmented object NPs do not always function to add telicity to the action named by the verbs. Oftentimes, they express adverbial force or intensity of the action rather than telicity. It is proposed that constraints on transitivized VPs encompass animate objects' volitional control, the force dynamics exerted by the subject NPs over the object NPs as the affecting and affected entities, and collostructional dependency. Within the framework of Construction Grammar, unexpected occurrences of transitivized intransitives are considered a metaphorical extension of the reaction object construction. |
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