Weather expressions in Basque: A typological perspective
Studies in Language 46(3) : 718-751 (2022)
Abstract
We make two claims regarding weather expressions in Basque: first, based on Eriksenet al.’s
(2010) typology, we show that Basque tends towards the argument type (and less frequently
so to the predicate-argument type) when coding dynamic (precipitation or other) events and
to both the argument and the predicate type when coding static events; Basque often has
transitive structures (i.e. both transitive predicate and argument transitive types), apparently
a rare typological feature. Second, with respect to two key issues in the study of weather
predicates within Generative Grammar, we claim (a) that Basque supports the view that both
lexicalizations of weather verbs (unaccusative and unergative/transitive) are possible across
languages, as argued by Bleotu (2015) and Levin & Krejci (2019); and (b) that the empty
pro subject of Basque transitive weather constructions is closer to a quasi-argument
(Chomsky 1981, Levin & Krejci 2019) rather than to a true expletive.