Psych verb transitivity: The English-Romance crosscut

MARÍN, RAFAEL; MANGIALAVORI RASIA, MARÍA EUGENIA

Conferencia; Linguistics Beyond And Within; 2021

Polish Academy of Sciences

Transitivity alternations, and the causative alternation in particular (Johnbroke the window vs. The window broke), sparked great interest over the lastforty years. Recently, attention has also been drawn to a less-often considered(intransitive) variant. This monadic alternate has cause(r) as sole argument,leaving the external argument as constant (wrt the transitive frame). Althoughnot as productive as in Romance, English allows for a relative regularproductivity of Intransitive Causatives [ICs] of this sort.(1) El tabaco mata/La lejía desinfecta/El arroz estriñe. (Spanish)(2) Tobacco kills/Bleach disinfects/Rice constipates. (English)We note several facts:A. Alternation is free in Romance and achieves a productive regularity inEnglish, a major split arises with (Object-Experiencer) psych verbs. ICunavailable, English recruits an analytic copular construction (be+-ing) to fillin the productive gap (4)b.(3) La economía preocupa/alarma/entristece/fascina/intriga/confunde/asusta.(Spanish)(4) a.*Economy worries/alarms/upsets/fascinates/intrigues/confuses/intimidates.b. Economy is worrying/alarming/upsetting/fascinating/intriguing/confusing/intimidating.(English)B. With Animate DP Subjects, Romance allows both involuntary,eventless generic dispositionals (subject=motive of psych state) andvolitional, agentive intransitives allowing non-generic tenses. English,instead, allows only for the latter. Verbs not allowing externally-causedeventualities fail.(5) a.*John worries/alarms/upsets/fascinates (all day/in the meetings).b. Tarantino/#Poberty bothers (a lot). also: bothers/scares/disturbs/opressesOBSERVATIONSC. Instances correspond to two distinct kinds of (in)transitive alternation(Mangialavori & Ausensi, 2021). Property of Agent Alternations (Levin 1993,Mittwotch 2005) [PAA] are eventive, episodic, where iterative readings andconsequent adverbials (7) improve acceptability of intransitive forms. ICs arenoneventive, nonepisodic, thus failing such contexts. PAAs (7) take DPsubjects allowing agentive/volitional predications; ICs take DPs interpretableas possible cause (8). Therefore, in Spanish, animated subjects do not yieldasymmetric acceptability (6) and the option for two readings (volitional-activevs. inanimate-theme-of-emotion) is preserved. In English, only allowing theformer, deviant acceptability obtains with the choice of subject(±animated/±volitional) (5).(6) a. Juan preocupa/alarma/fascina. (Spanish)(lit.) Juan worries/maddens/fascinates ?Juan is worrying/maddening/alarming/ fascinating?b. Juan molesta/asusta/fastidia/oprime.(lit.) Juan bothers/scares/disturbs/opresses⇒agentive subject reading (DO x)⇒non-agentive subject reading (John=cause of √N)(7)CHARACTERISTIC PROPERTY OF AGENT INTRANSITIVE (SUBJECT DO √)a. Tarantino bothers, bothers and bothers. (English)Tarantino molesta, molesta y molesta (Spanish)b. Tarantino bothers (all day/in staff meetings/on purpose)Tarantino molesta/fastidia (todo el día/en las reuniones/aposta)c. Manny saw Tarantino bother (at the meeting).Manny vio (a) Taratino molestar (en la reunión)(8)(NONVOLITIONAL) INTRANSITIVE CAUSATIVE (SUBJECT CAUSE √N)a. *Tarantino/#The tree bothers (all day/at the meetings/over and over/on purpose)#Tarantino/#El árbol molesta/fastidia (todo el día/en las reuniones/una y otra vez/aposta).b. *I?ve seen Tarantino/the tree bother.#He visto a Tarantino/el árbol molestar.D. PRESENT TENSE. In English, present tense eventualities have habitual orgeneric interpretations and cannot refer to an actual eventuality ongoing atpresent (Binnick 2005 i.a.). Romance present tense is ambiguous betweengeneric/habitual and episodic (ongoing-event) reading. (5) falls out:intransitives of OEPVs are only allowed iff eventive(generic/habitual/repetitive) reading is available (7). Eventive ongoingreading unavailable due to lexical stativity, the composite (be+ing)construction becomes an option for generic, non-episodic ILP predication withthe sole argument as cause (IC). Consistently, ongoing progressive is licensedunder a different (eventivity-allowing) structuring (anticausative).