Psych verb transitivity: the English-Romance crosscut

MANGIALAVORI RASIA, MARÍA EUGENIA; MARÍN, RAFAEL

Amherst - Massachussets

Congreso; SENSUS 2 Constructing meaning in Romance; 2021

University of Massachussets

AbstractTransitivity alternations, and the causative alternation in particular (John broke the window vs. The window broke), have aroused great interest over the last forty years ($ref$). Recently, attention has also begun to be paid to a curiously thus far disregarded argument frame realization: i.e., intransitive (unergative) variants of verbs entering the causative alternation (IC) ($ref$). Here we draw attention to two main asymmetries setting English and Spanish apart.(1)a. Smoking kills. b. Bleach disinfects. c. Alcohol dehydrates. d. Sunlight oxidizes and discolors. (2)b. Fumar mata. b. La lejía desinfecta. c. El alcohol deshidrata. d. El arroz estriñe. e. La luz solar oxida y destiñe.The first asymmetry stems from productive regularity. It has been pointed out that IC constructions seem far more productive in Spanish than in English (Mangialavori & Ausensi, 2020). A major crosscut is brought up by a set of verbs traditionally argued to enter the causative alternation as well: so-called object-experiencer (OE) psych verbs. As illustrated in the following examples, Spanish OEPVs are perfectly fine as ICs, while English OEPVs are not. The second crucial asymmetry is drawn by the semantic role assigned to the only (semantically- and syntactically-realized) argument. English recruits an analytic copular construction (be + -ing) to somehow fill in for the productive gap not seen in Romance (3). Curiously, however, whereas the English phrasal construction is ambiguous in some cases, or tends to an undergoer (affected theme) reading in others (4), Juan frightens > (lit. *Juan frightens) > Juan is frightening(3)a. John is worrying > John gets worried / John causes worry(4)b. John is bothering > John is doing something bothering / Juan causes bother.(5)a. Juan preocupa > Juan causes worryb. Juan molesta > Juan causes bother / Juan performs bothering actions)(6)a. Juan preocupa/es preocupantevs. Juan molesta/*es molestante.b. Juan *worries / is worryingvs. Juan bothers/is bothering.Interestingly, Spanish makes a clear morphosyntactic cut. For some OE verbs, Spanish ICs do not constrain the interpretation of the sole argument to either cause/motive of emotion or agent. Copula phrases reflect the same partition in the predicate used: present perfect (reflecting English -ing) or adjective. In English, in turn, the difference shows up in the readings available for objectless constructions (Mittwotch 2005 i.a.). Whereas one subset (the worry type) disallows agentive/volitive readings and fails eventivity-related tests like location in space (expected only in eventive-like [Davidsonian] statives); the other subset allows both agentive/volitional and location-framed constructions. Only for the latter, animated subjects can be equally interpreted as either active agents or as nonvolitional causes. This commonality between English and Spanish may be accounted for by domain defining relevant semantic components (constructional vs. lexical). In both (7)(8), dispositional habituality arises as, in this case, the predication states that entities have been actually bothered at the frequency or intervals indi-cated by the adverbial (cf. Boneh 2019). (7)a. #Economy worries (all day/in the meetings). b. Tarantino bothers (all day/in the meetings).(8)a. #La economía preocupa (todo el día/en las reuniones) b. Tarantino molesta (todo el día/en las reuniones). Observe, however, that (11)a and (11)b are different: in (11)a, the subject (Quentin) is the experiencer who suffers concern, while in (11)b the subject (Tarantino) is causing annoyance. In fact, (11)b has a progressive meaning (bothering is a gerund), while (11)a is a copular construction (worrying is a present participle).With animate DPs, only actual occurrences are perceived with quantificational modifiers Joe bothers {on Sundays / every Weekend /often}.