Variable linking in argument structure

Ever since the unaccusativity hypothesis was proposed, it has been noted that some intransitives allow for both an unergative and an unaccusative use, with systematic differences in interpretation. The unergative/unaccusative alternation is peculiar in that neither variant is semantically or syntactically a subset of the other, contrasting in this respect with, for instance, the causative-inchoative alternation. In this talk, I argue that variable unaccusativity is just one instance of a broader class of argument-structural alternations with the same profile, which I label variable linking alternations. I provide a cross-linguistic survey of different cases of variable linking, highlight the methodological implications of variable linking for argument structure research, and discuss the theoretical issues it raises.