Psychological Verbs and Psychological Adjectives

Abstract

Psychological verbs and psychological adjectives (often referred to as psych predicates ) describe emotions and mental states. They can also be defined as predicates that take Experiencer as one of their arguments. Cross‐linguistically, psych predicates systematically exhibit peculiar properties. Psychological verbs are subdivided into three major subclasses: Subject Experiencer (SE) verbs, Object Experiencer (OE) verbs, and Dative Experiencer (DE) verbs. Their argument structure is problematic for linking problems in view of UTAH (Uniformity of Theta Assignment Hypothesis) or similar mapping generalizations. Apart from that, in various languages psychological verbs exhibit clusters of characteristic syntactic properties that clearly set them apart from prototypical transitive agentive predicates. Importantly, psychological verbs are multiply ambiguous between stative, eventive (causative), and agentive readings. The peculiar psych properties obtain only on the stative and, arguably, eventive (causative) readings. On the agentive reading, they behave like transitive action verbs. To account for the “psych phenomenon,” various approaches appeared in the literature, especially with regard to OE verbs, since it is this subclass where the psych behavior is particularly conspicuous. The early classic syntactic approach attributes the properties of both psychological OE verbs and psychological adjectives to unaccusative syntax. In contrast, on the locative approach, their syntactic properties are attributed to Experiencers viewed as locations. Alternatively, a variety of lexical thematic accounts relate their properties to thematic role types (or clusters of thematic features), postulate thematic hierarchies to capture mapping generalizations, and formulate various thematic restrictions to account for the (in)compatibility of psych verbs and psych adjectives with various syntactic constructions. Recent event‐structure approaches, in turn, explain the polysemy and variable behavior of psych predicates to differences in event types and event participants rather than specific roles. Research on nominalizations provides important evidence for the nature of the psych phenomenon.

Thematic role assignment in non-default verb classes: A cross-linguistic comparison of English and German

“…Overall, we assume that the modulation of interpretations by verb class was likely driven by the divergence of experiencers from agents (for review, see Rozwadowska 2017). While agent-and experiencer-subjects are both required to be animate, the latter is a less prototypical actor (Dowty 1991;Van Valin et al 1997;Primus 1999) and this appears to promote subordinate cues for interpretation.…”

Sintaktičko-semantička podjela psiholoških glagola u hrvatskome jeziku

“…Odgovor na to djelo-ske uloge ostvaruju na različitim sintaktičkim mjestima (primjeri 32 i 33). Već je istaknuto u drugome poglavlju da su takve konstrukcije u neskladu s Bakerovim načelom o jedinstvenosti dodjeljivanja tematskih uloga ili s Perlmutterovim i Postalovim načelom univerzalnoga redanja 22 (Rozwadowska 2017). Za taj problem postoje dva rješenja.…”

“…Drugo rješenje mnogi autori smatraju nedostatnim (vidi primjerice Schäfer 2009:2). 22 Načelo Universal Alignment Hypothesis (UAH) načelo koje su predložili Postal i Perlmutter 1984. godine ovdje se prevodi kao načelo univerzalnoga redanja i citira se prema Rozwadowska (2017). 23 Svojstvo da se gotovo svaki psihološki glagol s objektnim iskustvenikom pojavljuje i u povratnoj inačici uočeno je u mnogim jezicima (slavenskim, romanskim i grčkom) te se smatra jednom od vrsta uzročne smjene (uzročnoinkoativna smjena), engl.…”

“…23 Svojstvo da se gotovo svaki psihološki glagol s objektnim iskustvenikom pojavljuje i u povratnoj inačici uočeno je u mnogim jezicima (slavenskim, romanskim i grčkom) te se smatra jednom od vrsta uzročne smjene (uzročnoinkoativna smjena), engl. causative alternation (Schäfer 2009;Rozwadowska 2017). U uzročnoj smjeni glagol pokazuje dva sintaktička obrasca: Maria opens the window.…”

The root derivation of psych nominals: Implications for competing overt and zero nominalizers

“…Psychological verbs have long made the focus of intense linguistic debate due to their apparent special properties, which make them different from other standard verb classes (see Belletti and Rizzi 1988, Pesetsky 1995, Iwata 1995, Arad 1998, 2002, Pylkkänen 2000, Reinhart 2001, Verhoeven 2008, Landau 2010, Rozwadowska 2017b, Grafmiller 2013, Rozwadowska and Willim 2016, Bondaruk et al 2017, Hirsch 2018. As Alexiadou and Iordăchioaia (2014a) put it, there are two main sources of this special behavior.…”