The locative syntax of experiencers
A new account of the peculiar syntax of psychological verbs argues that experiencers are grammaticalized as locative phrases. Experiencers--grammatical participants that undergo a certain psychological change or are in such a state--are grammatically special. As objects (John scared Mary; loud music...
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| Format: | eBook |
| Language: | English |
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Cambridge, Mass.
MIT Press
2010
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| Series: | Linguistic inquiry monographs
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| Collection: | MIT Press eBook Archive - Collection details see MPG.ReNa |
| Summary: | A new account of the peculiar syntax of psychological verbs argues that experiencers are grammaticalized as locative phrases. Experiencers--grammatical participants that undergo a certain psychological change or are in such a state--are grammatically special. As objects (John scared Mary; loud music annoys me), experiencers display two peculiar clusters of nonobject properties across different languages: their syntax is often typical of oblique arguments and their semantic scope is typical of subjects. In The Locative Syntax of Experiencers, Idan Landau investigates this puzzling correlation and argues that experiencers are syntactically coded as (mental) locations. Drawing on results from a range of languages and theoretical frameworks, Landau examines the far-reaching repercussions of this simple claim. Landau shows that all experiencer objects are grammaticalized as locative phrases, introduced by a dative/locative preposition. Existing accounts of psychological verbs either consider very few languages or fail to incorporate other theoretical frameworks; this study takes a broader perspective, informed by findings of four decades of research "Bare" experiencer objects are in fact oblique, too, the preposition being null. This preposition accounts for the oblique psych(ological) properties, attested in case alternations, cliticization, resumption, restrictions on passive formation, and so on. As locatives, object experiencers may undergo locative inversion, giving rise to the common phenomenon of quirky experiencers. When covert, this inversion endows object experiencers with wide scope, attested in control, binding, and wh-quantifier interactions. Landau's synthesis thus provides a novel solution to some of the oldest puzzles in the generative study of psychological verbs. The Locative Syntax of Experiencers offers the most comprehensive description of the syntax of psychological verbs to date, documenting their special properties in more than twenty languages. Its basic theoretical claim is readily translatable into alternative frameworks. |
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| Physical Description: | vi, 165 pages illustrations |
| ISBN: | 0262259028 9780262259026 |