Pure unaccusatives with Hoo I in Taiwan Southern Min

In Taiwan Southern Min, pure unaccusatives, which do not demonstrate causative alternation, can occur with hoo7 i1 to denote adversity. In the literature, hoo7 is considered to have various usages including verb, causative marker, passive marker, etc. This paper proposes that hoo7 in the hoo7 i1 pure unaccusative construction serves as an adversative marker. This hoo7 is obligatorily followed by the pronoun i1, which is expletive and nonreferential, and may occur in the overt or covert form. The hoo7 i1 sequence functions as an optional adjunct and is used to denote adversity. The hoo7 i1 construction must occur in a sentence denoting change of state; thus, a resultative verbal complement or a resultative clause is often used in the hoo7 i1 construction. However, verbs/compounds that denote change of state can also satisfy this semantic requirement, and in this case, no extra resultative elements are needed.