Right Wing Nation

Okay, I know that most people find linguistics incredibly dull, so I’m giving you a choice. The rest is below the fold, but it is somewhat political.

I just found this quotation in the Guardian:

“Gordon Brown is poised to scrap a series of unpopular tax rises as part of sweeping changes to stave off a dangerous revolt over the rising cost of living which last week dealt Labour its worst electoral hammering in 40 years.”

I’m quite sure I’ve seen this usage before, but for whatever reason, I had never noticed it until now. I refer to “tax rise.”

I do have a question: What if it’s being used verbally? Surely, they don’t use “rise” as a transitive verb, do they? Or do they? Does one “rise taxes” over there, and if so, how amazingly ugly is that?

Anyway, I’ll get to the intransitivity in a moment. That’s one of two interesting things about this usage.

Intransitive verbs are either unergative or unaccusative. Unergative verbs work the way most folks think all verbs work: The subject performs the action. So “run” is an unergative verb.

An unaccusative verb, like “fall,” or “die,” is one in which the subject does not perform the action, but undergoes the action (like what most people think direct objects in transitive verbs do). “Rise” is an unaccusative verb. The subject undergoes the action of the verb.

We also have a class of transitive verbs known as ergative verbs. When used with a direct object, the subject of an ergative verb performs the action (”The fleet sank the ship,” or “I drove the car”), but when used without a direct object, the subject of an ergative verb undergoes the action (”The ship sank,” or “The car drives well.”)

Let’s pick apart the semantics of “tax rise.” First, because it is an unaccusative verb, the subject — tax — undergoes the action of the verb. Second, because the verb is intransitive, while the subject undergoes the action, it has no direct obect. So what is actually going on — I, the citizen, am paying more taxes — is completely erased from the semantics.

Now, let’s contrast that with American English “tax raise,” or if you prefer the verbal form, “to raise taxes.” “Raise” is a transitive verb. Even though the phrase usually doesn’t appear with an overt direct object, “raise” is not an ergative verb, that is, the subject performs the action whether used transitively or intransitively, and the direct object is always implied, if not stated. “To raise taxes,” or “tax raise” semantically has an agent who performs the action — the politician — and a direct object who undergoes it — the citizen who will pay more taxes. So unlike “tax rise,” what is actually going on is never erased linguistically.

Now, it is probably the case that the distinction arose without respect to the semantics above. Nonetheless, it’s an interesting distinction, particularly if it did come about naturally. It’s even more interesting that “tax rise,” the phrase in which what is actually going on utterly disappears from the semantics, is used in the UK, where taxes are much higher, and “tax raise,” the phrase in which the meaning is not masked by the semantics, is used in the USA.

Okay, I’ll stop now.