Typology of the Psych Alternation in Morphology, Syntax and Discourse
In this project we deal with the phenomenon of psych verbs, focussing on an empirically sound language comparison of their syntactic and semantic behavior. We currently conduct a broad typological study of the psych-alternation. For the results of the previous project phase, see here.
The overall aim of this project is to determine the universal and typological properties of the syntax and semantics of experiencer verbs based on precise empirical methods. In the first funding period, the project has focused on the cross-linguistic experimental and observational investigation of selected non-canonical experiencer-object properties (= psych-effects) examining their syntactic vs. pragmatic nature. In the current period, the focus will be on the typology of the psych-alternation (cf. interessieren 'concern' vs. sich interessieren 'be concerned'). In particular, the project will investigate the role of the morphological root of psych verbs and the syntactic and semantic properties of the morphological processes that occur in cases of psych-alternations (causativization, decausativization, conversion, double derivation).
Investigation
In a typological investigation, the project collects and analyzes the relevant morphological facts of experiencer verbs in 30 languages. This cross-linguistic examination will be the evidential basis for a typologically adequate theory of experiencers. Furthermore, the project will investigate the relevance of the morphological differences between languages quantitatively (a) for the semantics and syntax of psych verbs and (b) for the realization of experiencer events in discourse.
In a sample of six languages, which represent different morphological types of the causative alternation (Icelandic, Finnish, Korean, Spanish, Chinese, Hungarian), the project carries out parallel experiments and corpus studies. The experimental studies examine semantic and syntactic properties of the experiencer verbs. The influence of these properties on the behavior of the respective verbal constructions in discourse are tested in quantitative corpus studies.
Causative Alternation
The project contributes to the current theoretical discussion on the causative alternation and will enrich this line of research with insights from a sample of languages that exceeds the currently discussed ones both in number and diversity. Furthermore, the project will make a significant contribution to lexical typology and the cross-linguistic investigation of the directionality in transitivization/detransitivization (Nichols et al. 2004) by examining the potential influence of typological variables on the cross-linguistic distinction at issue. Finally, the project will make an innovative contribution to the contemporary paradigm of cross-linguistic corpus investigations.
| 54th Annual Meeting of the Societas Linguistica Europaea, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece |
Aug. 31st–Sept. 3rd, 2021 |
| From formation to alternation: The case of the Nafsan psych domain by Rott, Julian & Ana Krajinović | |
| 13th International Austronesian and Papuan Languages and Linguistics Conference (APLL13), University of Edinburgh, UK | June 10th-12th, 2021 |
| Bad thoughts and heads: Psych expressions in Nafsan by Rott, Julian & Ana Krajinović | |
| Digital Workshop on Causativity, Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf, Germany | February 4th-5th, 2021 |
| Spanish causative psychological verbs: Insights from their scalar structure by Fritz-Huechante, Paola Abstract | Slides | |
| Invited Talk at Digital Workshop on Spanish Syntax, Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf, Germany | June 3rd-4th, 2020 |
| Subject agenthood and non-culmination readings: Evidence from Spanish psychological verbs by Fritz-Huechante, Paola Slides | |
| 1st International Summer School on "Language Comparison and Typology: German and the Mediterranean languages”, Aristoteles University of Thessaloniki, Greece | Aug. 28th-30th, 2019 |
| Cross-linguistic investigation of argument structure: experimental and observational research by Elisabeth Verhoeven Course description | Lecture I | Lecture II | |
| The 52nd Annual Meeting of the Societas Linguistica Europaea (SLE), Leipzig University, Germany | Aug. 21st–24th, 2019 |
| Reflexivizing Spanish psych-verbs: Ambiguities across classes by Fritz-Huechante, Paola & Antonio Machicao y Priemer Abstract | Slides | |
| The 26th International Conference on Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar (HPSG 2019), University of Bucharest, Romania | July 24th–26th, 2019 |
| Boundaries at play: Left-bounded reading of the se-morpheme in the Spanish psych-domain by Machicao y Priemer, Antonio & Paola Fritz-Huechante Abstract | Slides | |
| The 12th Mediterranean Morphology Meeting (MMM12), University of Ljubljana, Slovenia | June 27th–29th, 2019 |
| Reflexivizing Spanish psych-verbs: Ambiguities across classes by Machicao y Priemer, Antonio & Paola Fritz-Huechante Abstract | Poster | |
| Subject agenthood and non-inception readings: Evidence from Spanish and Korean psychological verbs, Uniwersytet Wrocławski, Poland | June 6th–7th, 2019 |
| by Fritz-Huechante, Paola joint work with Elisabeth Verhoeven & Julian A. Rott Slides | |
| Invited Talk at International Workshop Recent Approaches to (Non-)Agentivity in Natural Language, National University of Singapore, Singapore |
May 3rd-4th, 2019 |
| Agentivity and the typology of the psych alternation. by Elisabeth Verhoeven Slides | |
| Invited Talk at 1st International Workshop on Language Comparison and Typology: German and the Mediterranean languages (DEMINES), Humboldt Universität zu Berlin, Germany | October 12th, 2018 |
| Morphological markedness in discourse: A cross-linguistic corpus study. by Elisabeth Verhoeven Abstract | Slides | |
| 1st International Workshop on Language Comparison and Typology: German and the Mediterranean languages (DEMINES), Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Germany | October 12th, 2018 |
| Spanish psych-verbs in HPSG - Word order, theta-roles and eventuality structure by Machicao y Priemer, Antonio & Paola Fritz-Huechante Abstract | Poster | |
| Syntax of the World's Languages VIII, Paris, France | Sept. 3rd–5th, 2018 |
| A cross-linguistic perspective on the interaction of predicate structure, valence orientation and canonicity in psych expressions by Julian A. Rott, Elisabeth Verhoeven & Paola Fritz-Huechante Abstract | Slides | |
| 51st Annual Meeting of the Societas Linguistica Europaea (SLE 2018), Tallinn, Estonia | Aug. 29th–Sept. 1st, 2018 |
| Psych epiphenomena. A typology of the interplay of valence orientation and syntactic canonicity by Julian A. Rott, Elisabeth Verhoeven & Paola Fritz-Huechante Abstract | Slides | |
| 25th International Conference on Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar (HPSG 2018), University of Tokyo, Japan | June 30th–July 2nd, 2018 |
| Unmarked word order in Korean and Spanish psych-verbs: Interaction of case, theta-roles, and event structures in HPSG by Machicao y Priemer, Antonio & Paola Fritz-Huechante Abstract | Slides | |
| 5th European Workshop on HPSG (EW-HPSG 2018), Goethe-Universität, Frankfurt, Germany | June 1st-2nd, 2018 |
| Unmarked word order in the psych domain: Contrasting Spanish and Korean by Machicao y Priemer, Antonio & Paola Fritz-Huechante Slides | |
| Berlin Dative Days, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Germany |
May 24th, 2018 |
| Datives vs. Accusatives. A cross-linguistic experiment on object fronting by Elisabeth Verhoeven Abstract | |
| Invited Talk at Seminar at Center de Lingüística Teòrica, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Spain |
March 9th, 2018 |
| Morphological directionality and event structure of the psych-alternation: the case of Spanish, Korean and Finnish by Fritz-Huechante, Paola Joint work with Elisabeth Verhoeven & Julian A. Rott Abstract | Slides | |
| Linguistic Evidence 2018, Universität Tübingen, Germany | February 17th, 2018 |
| A cross-linguistic empirical approach to emotion lexis and syntax by Julian A. Rott, Elisabeth Verhoeven & Paola Fritz-Huechante Abstract | Slides | |
| Argument Structure across Modalities (ASAM) 2018, Universiteit van Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands | February 1st-2nd, 2018 |
| Structural effects of morphological directionality in psych verbs. A typology. by Rott, Julian A., Elisabeth Verhoeven & Paola Fritz-Huechante Abstract | Slides | |
| Endpoints, scales, and results in the decomposition of verbal predicates (ENDPOINTS 2018), Humboldt Universität zu Berlin, Germany | January 30th-31st, 2018 |
| Inchoative states, gradable states and (anti-)causativization in the psych domain: the cases of Spanish and Korean by Fritz-Huechante, Paola, Elisabeth Verhoeven & Julian A. Rott Abstract | Slides | |
| Workshop on Linguistic Variation at the Interfaces (VARINT) 2017, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Spain | November 16th-17th, 2017 |
| What does it take to culminate? Morphological directionality and semantics of the psych-alternation by Fritz-Huechante, Paola, Elisabeth Verhoeven & Julian A. Rott Abstract | Slides | |
| Labex EFL, Paris 3 & CNRS, Lecture series, Paris, France | 5th, 11th, 18th, 25th September 2017 |
| Cross-linguistic investigation of argument structure: experimental and observational research by Elisabeth Verhoeven | |
| Invited talk, University of Jena, Germany |
June 20th, 2017 |
| Zur Rolle des verbalen Lexikons in der Syntax: diskrete oder gradiente Eigenschaften by Elisabeth Verhoeven | |
| Invited talk, Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf, Germany |
May 17th, 2017 |
| Verb classes as predictors of syntactic behaviour by Elisabeth Verhoeven | |
| Invited Talk at Debrecen Workshop on Pronouns, University of Debrecen, Hungary |
Feb. 24th-25th, 2017 |
| Pronouns in the psych domain by Temme, Anne & Elisabeth Verhoeven Abstract | |
| Invited Talk, University of Frankfurt, Germany | February 9th, 2017 |
| Verb classes as predictors of syntactic behavior: Word order and binding by Elisabeth Verhoeven Abstract | |
| Invited Talk, University of Potsdam, Germany | January 17th, 2017 |
| Psych verbs: Theoretical predictions and empirical evidence by Elisabeth Verhoeven | |
| International Conference Grammar and Corpora, IDS Mannheim, Germany | Nov. 9th-11th, 2016 |
| Prominence effects in argument linearization: A cross-linguistic corpus study by Elisabeth Verhoeven Abstract | |
| Linguistics Beyond and Within (Ling-BaW), Katolicki Uniwersytet Lubelski Jana Pawła II, Lublin, Poland | October 21th, 2016 |
| On the typology of the psych alternation: Does morphological directionality influence syntax? by Rott, Julian Andrej & Elisabeth Verhoeven Abstract | Slides | |
| University of Leipzig, Germany | September 29th, 2016 |
| Argument alternations and linearization. A crosslinguistic corpus study by Elisabeth Verhoeven | |
| Forty Years After Keenan 1976, Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium | Sept. 7th-9th, 2016 |
| Subjecthood and the on-line processing of dyadic psych structures by Rott, Julian Andrej Abstract | Slides | |
| New Ways of Analyzing Syntactic Variation II, Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium | May 19th-20th, 2016 |
| Syntactic variation and syntactic uniformity across languages. A cross-linguistic corpus study on linearization devices. by Elisabeth Verhoeven Abstract | Slides | |
Fritz-Huechante, Paola, Elisabeth Verhoeven, and Julian A. Rott. 2020. Agentivity and non-culminating causation in the psych domain: Cross-linguistic evidence from Spanish and Korean. Glossa 5 (1): 128, 1-35. DOI
Rott, Julian A., Elisabeth Verhoeven, and Paola Fritz-Huechante. 2020. Valence orientation and psych properties: Towards a typology of the psych alternation. Open Linguistics 6, 1-23. DOI
Machicao y Priemer, Antonio and Paola Fritz-Huechante. 2020. Boundaries at play: Se in the Spanish psych domain. Lingvisticæ Investigationes 43 (1), 62-94. DOI
Rott, Julian & Verhoeven, Elisabeth. 2019. Tiers for fears and other emotions. A crosslinguistic approach to psych lexis and syntax. In Linguistic Evidence 2018 Online Proceedings. Tübingen: Universität Tübingen. URL
Machicao y Priemer, Antonio and Fritz-Huechante, Paola. 2019. Reflexivizing Spanish psych-verbs: Ambiguities across classes. In Jenny Audring, Nikos Koutsoukos and Christina Manouilidou (eds.), The 12th Mediterranean Morphology Meetings (MMM12), 42-53. Online Proceedings, University of Ljubljana. Pasithee. URL
Verhoeven, Elisabeth. 2018. Animacy shift and layers of nominal structure. Theoretical Linguistics 44(1-2):99-106. DOI
Verhoeven, Elisabeth. 2017. Scales or features in verb meaning? Verb classes as predictors of syntactic behaviour. L. de Cuypere, C. Vanderschueren, G. De Sutter (eds.) Current trends in analyzing syntactic variation. Belgian Journal of Linguistics, 31:164-193. DOI
Verhoeven, Elisabeth & Anne Temme. 2017. Word order acceptability and word order choice. In Featherston, S., Hörnig, R., Steinberg, R., Umbreit, B., Wallis, J. (eds.) Linguistic Evidence 2016 Online Proceedings. Tübingen: Universität Tübingen. URL
Temme, Anne & Elisabeth Verhoeven. 2017. Backward binding as a psych effect: A binding illusion? Zeitschrift für Sprachwissenschaft 36.2. 279-308. DOI
Rott, Julian Andrej. 2016. Germanic Psych Processing. Evidence for the status of dative Experiencers in Icelandic and German. In Stolz, C. & Stolz, T. (eds.), From Africa via the Americas to Iceland. Studies on reduplication and experiencers (= Diversitas Linguarum 40), 215-320. Bochum: Universitätsverlag Dr. N. Brockmeyer.
Temme, Anne & Elisabeth Verhoeven. 2016. Verb class, case, and order: A cross-linguistic experiment on non-nominative experiencers. Linguistics. 54.4. 769-813. Preprint | DOI