Definitions

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • adjective linguistics, of a verb Intransitive and having an experiencer as its subject, that is, the (syntactic) subject is not a (semantic) agent.
  • noun linguistics An unaccusative verb.

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

un- +‎ accusative, from the fact that in a nominative-accusative language, the accusative case, which marks the direct object of a transitive verb, typically marks the non-volitional role. In unaccusative verbs, the non-volitional arguments do not take the accusative case.

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Examples

  • And, once again looking over my shoulder at some teaching preparation, What's an unaccusative?

    Geekman is just plain weird. StyleyGeek 2007

  • And, once again looking over my shoulder at some teaching preparation, What's an unaccusative?

    Archive 2007-09-01 StyleyGeek 2007

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