Introduction

The theory of grammar predicts that a class of ergative adjectives should exist alongside the established classes of ergative verbs (Perlmutter 1978a, b; Burzio 1981, 1986), and ergative nouns. Their existence is a consequence of the X-bar Theory of phrase structure within the more general Lexicalist Hypothesis of Chomsky (1970). X-bar Theory imposes the condition that all phrasal categories (VP, NP, AP, PP, QP, AdvP, IP, CP) have the same internal structure. And the Lexicalist Hypothesis demands that morphologically related verbs, nouns, and adjectives be represented in the lexicon as single, categorially unspecified, entries endowed with certain unique theta-marking and selectional properties.

One would thus expect that an adjective morphologically related to an ergative verb (e.g. morto “dead” related to morire “die”) would also be ergative, that is, it should have its subject generated in object position, under A′, just as the subject of the corresponding ergative verb is generated in the structural object position, under V′.

On the basis of various phenomena in Italian, I will argue that the ergative/unergative distinction does indeed extend to (superficially intransitive) adjectives, in spite of the fact that adjectives which are morphologically related to ergative (and passive) verbs are not themselves ergative. Indeed, one of the reasons why the existence of a class of ergative adjectives was not immediately recognized, and is occasionally even explicitly denied (Burzio 1986; Levin and Rappaport 1986; Stowell 1987) is the absence of this “predicted” class of ergative adjectives.