LANGUAGE IN INDIA

Strength for Today and Bright Hope for Tomorrow

Volume 21:9 September 2021
ISSN 1930-2940

Editors:
         Sam Mohanlal, Ph.D.
         B. Mallikarjun, Ph.D.
         A. R. Fatihi, Ph.D.
         G. Baskaran, Ph.D.
         T. Deivasigamani, Ph.D.
         Pammi Pavan Kumar, Ph.D.
         Soibam Rebika Devi, M.Sc., Ph.D.

Managing Editor & Publisher: M. S. Thirumalai, Ph.D.

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A Literature Review of Experiencer Verb Constructions

Anu Pandey. Ph.D. Scholar

Abstract

This paper aims to review the existing research on the Experiencer-verb-constructions in various languages outlining the uniqueness of experience arguments from the perspective of argument structure and theta-theory. The paper begins with an introduction of the phenomena of ‘experiencer-verb-constructions’ also known as ‘Psych-verb-constructions’ with suitable examples from Hindi and other languages. The following sections provide a discussion and review of works on experiencer verb constructions done cross-linguistically so far. Postal (1970, 1971) for the first time pointed out the intriguing characteristic of experiencer-verbs and associated constructions. This was followed by explorations into these constructions by several linguists. Belleti and Rizzi’s (1988) investigated the psych-verb-constructions in Italian and divided them into 3 kinds of experiencer-verb-classes in Italian. He posited that experiencer verb constructions consist of two major arguments-experiencer and a theme. Grimshaw (1990) brings in the notion of theta-grid and prominence hierarchy proposing that the experiencer argument is the ‘subject’ and the theme argument forms the ‘object’. Pesetsky (1995) adopts a Causative morphological approach in which he recategorizes the kinds of experiencer verbs into– SubjectEXP class and ObjectEXP class. While the former has the experiencer as subject and Target/Subjectmatter as object, the latter has the Causer as Subject and experiencer as Object. Landau’s (2012) argues for the experiencer arguments to act similar to locatives. He claims that ‘quirky experiencers’ are the result of locative-inversion. Chandra (2000) divides experiencer verb constructions in Hindi based on her categorization into two semantic classes- unergatives denoting biological events and predicates denoting disease. Finally, a review of the above literature has been made.

Keywords: experiencer verb constructions, theta theory, crosslinguistic phenomena, Hindi

Introduction: What are Experiencer Verb Constructions?

Experiencer verb constructions are two-place-predicates that take two arguments, the experiencer, and the theme/stimulus. The experiencer can be the subject or the object in the construction, where it is differently case marked. The stimulus or theme takes the absolutive case.

As pointed out by Hook (1990:320), Psych predicates or experiencer verbs express a sensory, mental, or emotional state or change of state expressed by the verb. Any construction involving a psych verb consists of the following two significant participants or arguments- ‘the Experiencer,’ the person or group of people undergoing the experience, and ‘the experience, i.e., the entity or person which is the source of the experience.

Such verbs are different from other verbs because it has been found in various languages that constructions involving psych verbs often express a unique set of properties. According to Landau (2010), “Experiencers are not only cognitively special, but they are also linguistically special.” Few examples are as follows. There is obligatory accusative doubling if the object is an experiencee in Greek; otherwise, it is optional.

This is only the beginning part of the article. PLEASE CLICK HERE TO READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE IN PRINTER-FRIENDLY VERSION.

Anu Pandey
PhD Scholar
IIT Kanpur
anupd@iitk.ac.in
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