<p>This paper provides new support for the non-unified treatment of unaccusative syntax. The discussion focuses on two unaccusatives in Shantou Teochew (Southern Min), previously analyzed as marked and unmarked anticausative alternants. The marked form is shown to lack properties characteristic of anticausatives, however. It is also shown to require an out-of-control interpretation. The construction challenges cross-linguistic generalizations linking noncontrolled action to the recoverability of an external participant or force. This underattested configuration is nevertheless shown to be predicted by modal analyses of out-of-control. I develop an analysis in which the modal relates complex eventualities, yielding an event-structurally complex circumstantial unaccusative in a previously unattested out-of-control configuration. The case study expands typologies of out-of-control and unaccusativity, and contributes to ongoing debates about how modality, event structure, and argument realization interact at the syntax-semantics interface.</p>