IO realizations in Spanish reverse psych verb sentences
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Chiyo Nishida
Abstract
This paper examines the little-known morphosyntactic variation involving Spanish psych verbs that take an experiencer IO and a stimulus subject. With these verbs, a dative clitic duplicating the IO is widely assumed to be obligatory in the canonical [IO-V-S] order (A la gente joven LE/*Ø gustan los deportes ‘Young people like sports’). However, naturally occurring data from corpora show that clitic doubling is not obligatory in the non canonical [S-V-IO] order, yielding two variant constructions (Los deportes LE/Ø gustan a la gente joven ‘Sports appeal to young people’). Using written corpus data from Peninsular Spanish, the paper investigates two issues: (a) what is the overall distribution of clitic doubling in [S-V-IO] psych verb sentences?; (b) are there any systematic distributional differences between the two variants? With respect to (a), we found that for none of the 10 psych verbs surveyed was clitic doubling obligatory. With respect to (b), we found the presence of a clitic tends to restrict the referential properties of the lexical IO in terms of animacy, pronominality, individuality, and number. The findings of this study indicate that dative clitics, which are commonly analyzed as IO-V agreement markers, actually make a substantive contribution to the semantics of psych verb sentences.
Abstract
This paper examines the little-known morphosyntactic variation involving Spanish psych verbs that take an experiencer IO and a stimulus subject. With these verbs, a dative clitic duplicating the IO is widely assumed to be obligatory in the canonical [IO-V-S] order (A la gente joven LE/*Ø gustan los deportes ‘Young people like sports’). However, naturally occurring data from corpora show that clitic doubling is not obligatory in the non canonical [S-V-IO] order, yielding two variant constructions (Los deportes LE/Ø gustan a la gente joven ‘Sports appeal to young people’). Using written corpus data from Peninsular Spanish, the paper investigates two issues: (a) what is the overall distribution of clitic doubling in [S-V-IO] psych verb sentences?; (b) are there any systematic distributional differences between the two variants? With respect to (a), we found that for none of the 10 psych verbs surveyed was clitic doubling obligatory. With respect to (b), we found the presence of a clitic tends to restrict the referential properties of the lexical IO in terms of animacy, pronominality, individuality, and number. The findings of this study indicate that dative clitics, which are commonly analyzed as IO-V agreement markers, actually make a substantive contribution to the semantics of psych verb sentences.
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Introduction vii
-
Part 1. Atypical realization of the main arguments of the verb
- Verbs of pain and accusative subjects in Romanian 3
- Non-canonical ‘existential-like‘ constructions in colloquial Modern Hebrew 27
- IO realizations in Spanish reverse psych verb sentences 61
- Non-human agents as subjects in English and Dutch 87
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Part 2. Valency-changing devices and non-finite verb forms
- The argument-structure configuration of English middle and related structures 115
- Non-categorical categories 131
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Part 3. Variations in transitivity
- The semantic motivation of non-canonical predicative relations 163
- Atypical argument structures in French 181
- Split intransitivity in Lamaholot (East Flores, Indonesia) 203
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Part 4. Norm variation in predicate-arguments relations
- Geographic variation in a non-canonical infinitive structure with the modal verb brauchen 243
- Verbal constructions in spoken language deviating from the norm 265
- Index of authors 283
- Index of subjects 287
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Introduction vii
-
Part 1. Atypical realization of the main arguments of the verb
- Verbs of pain and accusative subjects in Romanian 3
- Non-canonical ‘existential-like‘ constructions in colloquial Modern Hebrew 27
- IO realizations in Spanish reverse psych verb sentences 61
- Non-human agents as subjects in English and Dutch 87
-
Part 2. Valency-changing devices and non-finite verb forms
- The argument-structure configuration of English middle and related structures 115
- Non-categorical categories 131
-
Part 3. Variations in transitivity
- The semantic motivation of non-canonical predicative relations 163
- Atypical argument structures in French 181
- Split intransitivity in Lamaholot (East Flores, Indonesia) 203
-
Part 4. Norm variation in predicate-arguments relations
- Geographic variation in a non-canonical infinitive structure with the modal verb brauchen 243
- Verbal constructions in spoken language deviating from the norm 265
- Index of authors 283
- Index of subjects 287
