The Transitive-Unaccusative Alternation: A Cross-Modal Priming Study

The relationship between different linguistic manifestations of an eventuality-denoting concept, referred to in the literature as diatheses or voices, is well-studied in theoretical linguistics. Among researchers studying this phenomenon, it is widely agreed that there is a systematic relationship between the various diatheses of a concept. However, when a specific alternation is addressed, the nature of this relationship, namely, its directionality, is at debate. This research employs the much-debated transitive-unaccusative alternation as a case-study and reports the results of two cross-modal priming experiments designed to explore how Hebrew speakers perceive it. The results reveal an asymmetry between the facilitating effects of transitives and unaccusatives, thus suggesting that the relationship between these diatheses is directional. As a whole, this study demonstrates that theoretical debates regarding derivational relationships can be addressed by means of psycholinguistic research.