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The locative syntax of experiencers

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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. “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. 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

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Detail Information

Series Title

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Call Number

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Publisher

Cambridge, Massachusetts : MIT Press,., 2009

Collation

1 online resource (vi, 165 pages) :illustrations.

Language

English

ISBN/ISSN

9780262259026

Classification

NONE

Content Type

text

Media Type

computer

Carrier Type

online resource

Edition

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Subject(s)

Grammar, Comparative and general
Semantics

Specific Detail Info

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Statement of Responsibility

Idan Landau

Other Information

Cataloger

umi

Source

https://direct.mit.edu/books/book/2347/The-Locative-Syntax-of-Experiencers

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Digital Object Identifier (DOI)

https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/8387.001.0001

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