Transitivity in flux

The role of Voice and v in the syntax of Dutch (change-of-)location verbs

Bibliographic Data

ID19488951
AuthorsIrina Burukina (0000-0001-8537-8931, University of Florida), Marcel Den Dikken (0000-0003-2602-2331, ELTE Research Centre for Linguistics), Maria Polinsky (0000-0003-1460-5089, University of Maryland, College Park)
Year2026
Volume11
Issue1
Publication date2026-03-19
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueGlossa a journal of general linguistics (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 2397-1835 • E-ISSN: 2397-1835
PublisherOpen Library of the Humanities (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.16995/glossa.24276
OpenAlexW7124441684
LanguageEN
References cited12

Dutch location and change-of-location verbs exhibit seemingly contradictory properties, with characteristics of transitives and unaccusatives mixed. While base verbs like vallen ‘fall’ are unaccusative, some of their particle and prepositional derivatives (binnen+vallen ‘invade’, aan+vallen ‘attack’, over+vallen ‘raid’) are transitive, licensing direct objects and forming personal passives. These derivatives, however, do not form a homogeneous group: binnenvallen and aanvallen display mixed transitive-unaccusative properties, including variation in auxiliary selection, while overvallen behaves as a fully transitive verb. To account for these patterns, we propose a novel syntactic analysis relying on separate functional heads v and Voice. We argue that some structures contain both transitive vP and VoiceP, while others contain only VoiceP. This structural variation accounts for the observed transitivity contrasts, including auxiliary selection patterns and participial formation. The Dutch evidence offers support for a split approach to vP-VoiceP architecture and challenges theories that require the simultaneous presence of both projections

Passive voice · Syntax · Transitive relation · Employee Welfare and Language Studies · Linguistic Variation and Morphology · Syntax, Semantics, Linguistic Variation

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