Psych verbs

Using Catalan and Mayangna data as evidence, I claim that experiencer predicates are drawn from a universal structure, headed by the functional projection vEXPP. According to this structure, an experience-denoting N is merged with a V-head to obtain an experience predication, which may take a source of experience phrase as its specifier. The experiencer, introduced by the vEXP head, c-commands the source of experience allowing for a ‘parasitic’ possession relationship. Additionally, the data presented here show that a limited subset of experience phrases allow an agentive reading. I argue that such agentive interpretation is the result of the merging in the structure of an agentive functional head, vAG, generated above vEXPP. In turn, this agentive functional head is responsible for the introduction of the agentive, external argument.

In this paper I investigate the diachronic development of the "fratris me pudet" (Ter. Ad. 391) construction type in Late Latin, with a view to exploring the factors that played a significant role in the analogical process that lead this impersonal pattern to be reinterpreted as personal and transitive over centuries. By comparing the kind of Stimuli typically associated with the pudet-type verbs and their specific meaning, I show that they differ in view of different degrees of agentivity, control and volitionality exerted by the Experiencer. Paenitet ‘to repent’ reveals itself as being the most agentive verb and this is why it underwent an early process of personalization, achieved only later by those verbs whose semantics implied a lower degree of rational involvement and control over the experience. This paper shows that semantic factors may influence the formal coding of a given verb and accelerate its syntactic reinterpretation, and explores in what terms such constructional changes took place in Late Latin.

This volume is about the morphosyntactic encoding of feelings and emotions in Latin. It offers a corpus-based investigation of the Latin data, benefiting from insights of the functional and typological approach to language. Chiara Fedriani describes a patterned variation in Latin Experiential constructions, also revisiting the so-called impersonal constructions, and shows how and why such a variation is at the root of diachronic change. The data discussed in this book also show that Latin constitutes an interesting stage within a broader diachronic development, since it retains some ancient Indo-European features that gradually disappeared and went lost in the Romance languages.

This article focuses on the nouns which are morphologically related to psychological verbs, and, more in particular, on those that denote both the experiencer-related mental state (Il nous parle de son obsession pour le web ‘She talk to us about her obsession with the web’) and the target of such state (Elle n’a qu’une obsession à 3 semaines des JO: ne pas tomber malade ‘She has just an obsession three weeks before the OG: not to fall ill’). This semantic alternation is not systematic (cf. *Son frère est sa seule admiration ‘His/her brother is his/her only admiration’); some nouns allow it (obsession ‘obsession’, préoccupation ‘preoccupation’, tentation ‘temptation’, …) while some others reject it (admiration ‘admiration’, découragement ‘discouragement’, soulagement ‘relief’, …). We propose to relate the possibility or impossibility of this semantic alternation on the basis of the noun's aspectual properties. Additionally, our analysis throws light on some aspectual differences involving the verbal bases related to these nouns.

This paper addresses the problem of the special behavior of verbs expressing emotions from the perspective of the complexity of emotions as studied in psychology and philosophy. The evolution of the meaning of the word emotion in English provides the starting point for the discussion of the phenomenon of emotion, whose complexity is then argued to find reflection in language. It is argued that the finer-grained distinctions within the class of verbs encoding affective phenomena based on temporal relations and causativity can help to distinguish between the psychological experiences encoded with SE and OE verbs in English. It is also suggested that nominalizations provide evidence for the prominence of Experiencers as identifiers of psych eventualities, which is correlated with a cognitive imbalance between the Experiencer and the Stimulus. The puzzling properties of psych verbs are thus attributed to the variety of state and event types they describe.

Dative experiencer predicates in Hungarian investigates the argument structure and the syntax of appeal to- and important-type predicates in Hungarian. Couched in terms of Reinhart’s (2000, 2002) Theta System, the thesis presents arguments for the need to resort to the lexicon in setting up systematic generalizations concerning the licensing and the basic syntactic behavior of dative experiencers. 
Dative experiencer predicates are distinct both conceptually and thematically from subject- and object-experiencers, and the three classes of predicates cannot be collapsed at any level of representation. Dative experiencers themselves can be of three distinct grammatical types. Appeal to-type predicates have dative experiencer arguments, but important-type predicates license dative thematic adjuncts, which are optional and which have distinctive semantic, morphological, and syntactic properties. A general account of thematic adjuncts is developed. Non-thematic datives are distinguished as a third type of dative experiencers. These can freely be inserted into any clause as regular adjuncts.
A fresh look is taken from this perspective at the syntax of dative experiencer constructions in Hungarian. Hungarian dative experiencer predicates are shown to be non-quirky. Their peculiar syntactic behavior is the consequence of their special thematic properties. In addition, the argument - thematic adjunct distinction helps the author to reconsider the role dative phrases play in agreement-marked infinitival constructions in Hungarian.
This thesis is of relevance to scholars working on experiencer predicates, dative case, and quirky subjects in particular; and to scholars interested in argument structure, lexicalist theories, and the argument - adjunct distinction in general.

Pocos ámbitos de la gramática del español alcanzan tal grado de complejidad. Por motivos de diversa índole, los denominados predicados psicológicos componen un rompecabezas cuya resolución supone un auténtico desafío gramatical. A ello contribuye principalmente su sorprendente variabilidad, tanto en el fondo como en la forma. Así, por lo que respecta a los verbos, en unos casos es el sujeto el que experimenta una emoción (temer); en otros, lo es el objeto (asustar). En lenguas como el español, los de experimentante objeto, además, pueden mostrarse bajo las más diversas formas; entre otras, la de acusativo (lo asustan), dativo (le asustan) o pronominal (se asusta), sin que sepamos aún muy bien si de alguna de esas variantes derivan las demás.
Con el ambicioso objetivo de reducir el número de piezas que aún no encajan –o no del todo– en este puzle, el presente volumen incluye, además de un capítulo introductorio sobre el estado de la cuestión, siete artículos de otros tantos especialistas que examinan estos predicados –no solo los verbos, sino también adjetivos y nombres– desde diferentes perspectivas, tanto teóricas como empíricas.

Мы пытаемся показать, что существует общий механизм, стоящий за альтернацией при ментальных глаголах, которые способны употребляться 1) с двумя объектами, один из которых обычно личный, а другой - ситуация (Вася осуждает Петю за его поведение; Вася согласился с Петей в его выводах); 2) с одним объектом-ситуацией (Вася осуждает поведение Пети, Вася согласился с выводами Пети). Оказывается, что все такие глаголы обозначают ментальные реакции на ситуацию, которые направлены на лицо. Мы показываем, что синтаксическое устройство альтернирующих глаголов напрямую связано с этим сочетанием семантических свойств.

В докладе представлены результаты продолжающегося корпусного исследования пар переходных и возвратных глаголов эмоций (восхищать-восхищаться, обрадовать-обрадоваться). Рассматриваются три параметра, связанных со свойствами участников глаголов эмоций: онтологический класс Стимула, коммуникативный статус Стимула, лицо Экспериенцера. На основе различий между переходными и возвратными глаголами эмоций выводятся типичные дискурсивные функции глаголов эмоций в письменных (прежде всего художественных) и устных текстах (на материале НКРЯ). Типичные для переходных и возвратных глаголов эмоций контексты употребления позволяют предположить, что переходные глаголы эмоций используются скорее для передачи интеллектуальной оценки ситуации, а возвратные глаголы эмоций скорее используются для описания наблюдаемых со стороны объективных проявлений эмоций.

Aspectual notions, although displayed most clearly in verbs, manifest across categories, with notions like (un)boundedness manifesting themselves in several instantiations which are sometimes specific of individual grammatical categories. This paper contributes to the ongoing debate on how aspectual notions emerge in different categorial domains by an analysis of subject-experiencer and object-experiencer psychological predicates (SEPVs and OEPVs, respectively). We review the evidence that SEPVs denote individual level (IL) states, and provide new facts –taken from the behaviour of participles– in favour of that diagnostic; we also argue that OEPVs should be classified as states of the stage level (SL) class. We argue that OEPVs denote states with an onset, which corresponds to the denotation of SLs. SEPVs simply denote states without boundaries, which we argue to correspond to IL predicates. Finally, we show how these two denotations follow without further assumptions from the structures proposed for SEPVs and OEPVs in previous work, specially Pesetsky (1995), making it unnecessary to postulate that the distinction is of lexical nature.

This paper demonstrates the relevance of the semantic approach to transitivity (going back to Hopper and Thompson 1980) for the analysis of Vedic causative verbs. I argue that in terms of this approach it is possible to explain a number of constraints on causative derivation (which cannot be explained in terms of the traditional, syntactic, definition) and to offer a unified account of the semantics of these verbs. I also briefly discuss some theoretical implications of this analysis of causative verbs in Vedic for a diachronic typology of transitivity.

The actor-undergoer hierarchy hits its limits when it comes to describing the macrorole assignment of
several verb classes. This chapter deals with four problematic cases: causation, three-place state predicates,
two-place object-experiencer verbs, and finally, transitive versus intransitive verbs of motion.
Working out ideas in Kailuweit (2013), I propose the activity hierarchy as an alternative to the actorundergoer
hierarchy. Starting from a set of two actor features (c = causation/control, m = mental) and
one undergoer feature (r = resultative), the activity hierarchy brings into play semantic criteria that
have dominated the discussion on generalized semantic roles in the last decades. The activity hierarchy
allows for a sufficient number of activity degrees to describe the macrorole assignment in the four
problematic cases.

Since Belletti & Rizzi (1988), there has been a considerable debate over whether object experiencer psychological verbs (OEPVs) are able to form verbal passives or not. Some authors (Grimshaw, 1990; Legendre, 1993) agree with Belletti & Rizzi (1988) in considering that OEPVs are unaccusative and, that therefore, they cannot form verbal passives, but only adjectival passives. Other authors (Pesetsky, 1995; Bouchard, 1995) argue that OEPVs are normal transitive verbs and, that therefore, they are able to form verbal passives. Related to this, Landau (2002) distinguishes two types of languages: (i) A languages (e.g. English, Dutch, Finnish), in which (eventive) OEPVs are allowed to form verbal passives, and (ii) B Languages, where OEPVs are only allowed to form adjectival passives. However, as Landau himself acknowledges, most of the tests that are supposed to distinguish verbal and adjectival passives are not very clear-cut.
Interestingly, because of the alternation between the two copulas ser and estar, Spanish provides such a clear-cut diagnostic: (eventive) verbal passives are formed with ser, while adjectival passives are formed with estar (Marín, 2001). In this presentation, I will show that, according to the aforementioned criterion, Spanish OEPVs fall into two groups: (i) those such as asustar ‘frighten’ or molestar ‘annoy’, which are able to form both verbal passives and adjectival passives, and (ii) those such as preocupar ‘worry’ or aburrir ‘bore’, which are only able to form adjectival passives. The existence of these two groups is clearly related to agentivity: asustar-verbs that have an animate subject are agentive, while preocupar-verbs are never agentive. Contrary to the received view, I will demonstrate that these two classes do not differ with respect to aspect: both denote inchoative states (Marín & McNally, 2005; 2011).

In the recent literature, it is widely assumed that adjectival passives are stative, while verbal passives are eventive. Regarding Spanish, it is also mostly assumed that adjectival passives only come with estar (El edificio está bien construido, «The building is well built»), while verbal passives only come with ser (El edificio ya ha sido construido, «The building has already been built»). However, there is at least a group of verbs, that of subject experiencer psych verbs (SPEVs), which poses a serious problem to these generalizations, given that passives of SEPVs, although being unquestionably stative, are constructed with ser: Pedro es temido, «Pedro is feared». In this paper it is argued, that SEPV passives are not verbal, but adjectival, and that they take ser because they denote individual-level states.

Die Vielfalt der linguistischen Konstruktionen, die Emotionen ausdrücken, ist ziemlich beachtlich und ihre Analyse bringt zur Aufmerksamkeit einen Reichtum von syntaktischen Mustern. Ausgangspunkt dieses Beitrags ist die Arbeit von Arad (1998), welche die psychologischen Konstruktionen auf Englisch untersucht. Sie analysiert die nicht-inkorporierten Formen der Prädikate mit Experiencer-Objekt und zeigt, daß die Experiencer-Rolle mit anderen semantischen Rollen ersetzbar ist. Sie argumentiert, daß es unwahrscheinlich ist, dass es spezifische syntaktische Regeln für Psych-Verben gibt, nur weil sie einen Experiencer in ihrem thematischen Raster haben, wie es in Belletti und Rizzi (1988) vorgeschlagen wurde. Das Ziel dieses Aufsatzes ist Arads Vorschlag zu der Analyse der Psych-Konstruktionen im Deutschen und Rumänischen anzuwenden, und dabei eine syntaktische Gruppierung von psychologischen Prädikatkonstruktionen mit einem Experiencer-Objekt in den beiden Sprachen zu erarbeiten. Mit dieser Absicht werden wir zuerst kurz die Haupteigenschaften der psychologischen Verben mit Experiencer-Objekt erwähnen, dann untersuchen wir Konstruktionen, die psychologische Nominale und Adjektive einschlieβen, und ziehen wir eine Parallele zwischen diesen Strukturen im Deutschen und Rumänischen. Il y a une multitude de constructions linguistiques exprimant des émotions dont l'analyse montre une large variété de structures syntaxiques. Le point de départ de notre contribution est l'article d'Arad (1998), dans lequel elle examine des constructions psychologiques en anglais. Arad analyse des formes non-incorporées des prédicats avec Expérienceur-Objet et elle montre que le rôle d'Expérienceur peut être remplacé par d'autres rôles thématiques. Il est peu probable, elle dit, qu'il y ait des règles spécifiques pour les verbes psychologiques, seulement parce qu'ils contiennent un Expérienceur dans leur grille thématique, comme Belletti et Rizzi (1988) ont proposé. Notre objectif est d'appliquer la proposition d'Arad à l'analyse des constructions psychologiques en allemand et en roumain et, en subsidiaire, de réaliser un groupement syntaxique des structures prédicat avec un Expérienceur-Objet, pour les deux langues. A ce but, nous présenterons brièvement les caractéristiques principales des verbes psychologiques, nous examineront les constructions incluant des noms ou des adjectifs psychologiques et nous ferons un parallèle entre ces structures en allemand et en roumain.

The present paper deals with Romance Objective-Experiencer verbs (OE-verbs). I will show that the different subclasses fit into a continuum between a causative and an unaccusative pole. In order to describe their varying syntactic behaviour, a finer-grained analysis of the subevents they denote will elucidate that a traditional approach following the Vendler-Dowty classes of aktionsart will reach its limit when it comes to OE-verbs. My claim is that case assignment to the EXPERIENCER does not straightforwardly follow from the aktionsart class, but from the activity contrast between the two arguments of the verb. The presence or absence of causativity explains the differentiation between two types of EXPERIENCER: a) a more passive causatively affected EXPERIENCER and b) a less passive EXPERIENCER undergoing a change of state in a particular situation without being affected by an external CAUSER. In addition, we find a third type of OE-verb: prototypically unaccustative (ergative) verbs, such as verbs of liking, which select a more active EXPERIENCER expressing a subjective judgement. These three types constitute prototypical categories with fuzzy edges. Romance languages differ in the way they code the three types at the lexical level and at the level of the constructional inventory. The results can be formalized following the activity hierarchy approach (Kailuweit 2013).

Keywords: activity Hierarchy, unaccusativity, causativity, verbs of emotion, experiencer

This study addresses the issue of the teaching-learning process of emotions with reverse psych-verb con-structions (e.g., me gusta ‘that pleases me’) in the Spanish as a Foreign Language (ELE in the native lan-guage acronym) classroom. In these constructions, an external object or event (the Stimulus) is felt to act on an Experiencer in order to engender within him or her a particular mental event (e.g., a feeling of pleasure). We further examine this type of constructions in 10 ELE textbooks in an attempt to elucidate their treat-ment and departing from the hypothesis that their grammatical explanation does not contemplate com-municative-cognitive aspects. Results from a qualita-tive analysis show an overall communicative treat-ment of these linguistic forms, yet a formalist, unsys-tematic and cognitively poor one as well, which would partly account for ELE learners’ difficulties in acquiring these constructions. Results point to the need to advocate the union of the communicative and cognitive approaches in order to master these gram-matical elements and reach effective communication.

Using quantitative methods, we analyze naturalistic corpus data in two sign languages, German Sign Language and Russian Sign Language, to study subject-omission patterns. We find that, in both languages, the interpretation of null subjects depends on the type of the verb. With verbs signed on the signer's body (body-anchored verbs), null subjects are interpreted only as first person. With verbs signed in neutral space in front of the signer (neutral verbs), this restriction does not apply. We argue that this is an effect of iconicity: for body-anchored verbs, the signer's body is a part of the iconic representation of the verbal event, and by default the body is interpreted as referring to the signer, that is, as first person. We develop a formal analysis using a mechanism of mixed agreement, taking inspiration from Matushansky's (2013) account of mixed gender agreement in Russian. Specifically, we argue that body-anchored verbs bear an inherent feature that gives a first-person interpretation to null subjects. When a body-anchored verb is combined with an overt third-person subject, a feature mismatch occurs which is resolved in favor of the third person. Neutral verbs do not come with inherent feature-value specifications, thus allowing all person interpretations. We also explain how our analysis predicts the interpretation of null subjects in the context of role shift. With our account, we demonstrate that iconicity plays an active role in the grammar of sign languages, and we pin down the locus of the iconicity effect. While no iconic or modality-specific syntactic mechanisms are needed to account for the data, iconicity is argued to determine feature specification on a subset of sign language verbs.

In this paper we take into account an impersonal copular construction conveying emotional states in some South Slavic languages, namely Bulgarian, Serbo-Croat (Croat, Bosnian, Montenegrin and Serb), and Slovene. This construction features an Accusative-marked Experiencer and a noun with a (seemingly) predicative function realized as a syntactic subject and expressing the emotion felt. Drawing on the available diachronic data, we attempt to reconstruct the development of this peculiar pattern and compare it with equi-functional constructions in Eastern and Western Slavic languages, which however exhibit a Dative Experiencer. We also offer a cross-linguistic survey of similar impersonal constructions as they are attested in a number of ancient Indo-European languages and argue that they should be interpreted in terms of resid- ual patterns that remount to a prehistoric stage where some domains of the grammar where organized on the basis of active patterns of alignment.

The processability account anticipates that learners will make more underpassivization errors than overpassivization errors since passivization entails more processing. Although one study on psych-verbs and a few on unaccusatives examined Turkish L2 learners’ acquisition, no research compared a single set of learners’ acquisitions of these verbs together from a processing point of view. In this regard, the current study aims to investigate whether the processing complexity of passivization influences acquisition of psych and unaccusative verbs. It also questions whether general accuracy levels in Grammaticality Judgement Task (GJT) and degree of familiarity with target verbs are related to their level of accuracy with individual psych and unaccusative verbs. 33 undergraduate-level university students performed on the GJT and a Word Familiarity Rating Task (WFRT). The GJT included 38 items with 12 sentences for psych-verbs, 12 sentences for unaccusative-verbs, 12 sentences for distra...

Мы пытаемся показать, что существует общий механизм, стоящий за альтернацией при ментальных глаголах, которые способны употребляться 1) с двумя объектами, один из которых обычно личный, а другой - ситуация (Вася осуждает Петю за его поведение; Вася согласился с Петей в его выводах); 2) с одним объектом-ситуацией (Вася осуждает поведение Пети, Вася согласился с выводами Пети). Оказывается, что все такие глаголы обозначают ментальные реакции на ситуацию, которые направлены на лицо. Мы показываем, что синтаксическое устройство альтернирующих глаголов напрямую связано с этим сочетанием семантических свойств.

"In this paper, we argue that by making a careful distinction between the notions of inchoativity and telicity, we can gain new insight into how changes of state can be expressed in natural language. Our argument is based on an analysis of Spanish reflexive psychological verbs (SRPVs) such as aburrirse ‘to be/become bored’ and enfadarse ‘to become angry.’ We present diagnostics that clearly support the claim that while these verbs are inchoative, they are not telic, nor do they denote changes of state. Additional tests indicate that these verbs are not dynamic, either; however, we show that they lack dynamicity for different reasons: aburrirse verbs, because they are stative; enfadarse verbs, because they denote truly punctual eventualities.
We present a formal semantic analysis using the event ontology proposed in Piñón (1997). This analysis allows us to capture very naturally the similarities and differences between the two subclasses of SRPVs, to characterize their inchoativity, and to distinguish it from telicity. In addition, it supports a view of the Vendlerian aspectual classes on which the achievement class describes truly punctual eventualities and excludes certain predicates commonly (if not universally) assumed to belong to this class, such as the so-called degree achievement verbs."

In this paper we discuss the argument structure of psych verbs in connection with information structure, particularly object experiencer psych verbs (OEPVs), which select an accusative and/or dative argument. We propose that the natural order available in all-focus sentences for dative OEPVs is OVS, whereas the order for accusative OEPVs is SVO. Any rearrangement of these two patterns is caused by a different information structure interpretation.

This paper discusses the instrumental noun phrases and prepositional phrases with the instrumental, which appear with psychological verbs. In brief outline we elucidate our understanding of the arguments. The question of whether the arguments expressed with instrumental are arguments or adjuncts has been studied in various analyses (Schütze 1995; Van Valin 2001; Koenig et al. 2003, 2008). The problem of classifying instrumental noun phrases as one of different types of arguments arose in processing the verbs within the different theories of valency. Instrumental can be marked as an instrumental argument, adverbial, predicate or as part of a prepositional argument. We present and propose various formal and semantic tests that can determine the type of argument and divide the instrumental noun phrases into instrumental, predicate, adverbial and prepositional complements.

Word order alternation has been described as one of the most productive information structure markers and discourse organizers across languages. Psycholinguistic evidence has shown that word order is a crucial cue for argument interpretation. Previous studies about Spanish sentence comprehension have shown greater difficulty to parse sentences that present a word order that does not respect the order of participants of the verb's lexico-semantic structure, irrespective to whether the sentences follow the canonical word order of the language or not. This difficulty has been accounted as the cognitive cost related to the miscomputation of prominence status of the argument that precedes the verb. Nonetheless, the authors only analyzed the use of alternative word orders in isolated sentences, leaving aside the pragmatic motivation of word order alternation. By means of an eye-tracking task, the current study provides further evidence about the role of information structure for the c...