Experienced action constructions in Umpithamu: Involuntary experience, from bodily processes to externally instigated actions

Jean-Christophe Verstraete

doi:10.1515/cogl.2011.011

Article

Experienced action constructions in Umpithamu: Involuntary experience, from bodily processes to externally instigated actions

Jean-Christophe Verstraete

Published/Copyright: April 17, 2011

Published by

Become an author with De Gruyter Brill

Submit Manuscript Author Information Explore this Subject

From the journal Volume 22 Issue 2

Abstract

This paper is a semantic analysis of ‘experienced action’ constructions in Umpithamu, a Paman language from Cape York Peninsula (Australia). The basic argument is that these constructions are related to the better-attested category of experiencer object constructions (e.g. Evans, Non-nominative subjects 1: 69–192, 2004), which in Umpithamu describe involuntary experience of bodily processes. Experienced action constructions extend the feature of ‘involuntary experience’ from processes within the body to actions originating outside the body, and thus provide a semantically marked alternative for standard transitive clauses. The constructions are typologically interesting because they show the need to identify different loci of experiential semantics in a construction, and they help to clarify the status of control for human Undergoers within semantic typologies of reduced transitivity.

Keywords.: Experiencer; involuntary experience; transitivity; differential object marking; valency-reducing alternations

Received: 2009-12-29

Revised: 2010-07-26

Published Online: 2011-04-17

Published in Print: 2011-May

You are currently not able to access this content.

Articles in the same Issue

https://doi.org/10.1515/cogl.2011.011

Keywords for this article

Experiencer; involuntary experience; transitivity; differential object marking; valency-reducing alternations