Variables in the acceptability of transitive variants for internally caused verbs of change of state in Romanian
Variables in the acceptability of transitive variants for internally caused verbs of change of state in Romanian

Summary/Abstract: This paper explores the acceptability of transitive variants for a number of seemingly internally caused verbs of change of state in Romanian, i.e. the verbs express change of state events and lack transitives. To this effect, we designed a linguistic questionnaire which tested the acceptability of transitive counterparts of these verbs, in which we varied the denotation of the subject argument, i.e. natural force vs. agent. The overall results obtained from the 33 participants in the survey revealed the influence of semantic factors on transitive acceptability. The respondents marginally accepted the transitives with natural force subjects, while they rejected the transitives with agent subjects. On the other hand, transitive acceptability varies with the age of the participants, the low scores assigned to the transitives put to the test, irrespective of the denotation of the subject argument, by the youngest group points towards the maintenance of the current valence of these verbs.

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