Exceptional Binding with Psych Verbs?

Cançado, Márcia; Franchi, Carlos

doi:10.1162/002438999553995

Cited by 15 publications

(4 citation statements)

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“…35 The claim that backward binding is a structural phenomenon falling under Principle A is disputed by (a.o.) Zribi-Hertz (1989), Bouchard (1992), Pollard and Sag (1992), Reinhart and Reuland (1993), Iwata (1995), Arad (1998), Cançado and Franchi (1999) Belletti and Rizzi (1988) argue that EO psych verb subjects are not "deep" subjects based on a range of data from Italian. English offers independent evidence for this view in examples like (98a-d).…”

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confidence: 99%

Psych verbs in English and Mandarin

Cheung

Larson

2014

Nat Lang Linguist Theory

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Psych verb constructions show peculiar properties. They appear to project the same θ-relations into inverse configurations (John fears sharks/Sharks frighten John). Furthermore, Experiencer Object psych verb constructions admit backward binding in apparent violation of familiar c-command conditions (Pictures of himself anger John). We offer a solution to both puzzles drawing crucially on data from English and Mandarin. We argue that apparent θ-role inversion is an illusion, and that Experiencer Subject psych verb constructions like John fears sharks are not in fact simple transitive constructions but instead involve a concealed clause with a silent predicate (John fears [CP sharks PRED]). Regarding backward binding, we argue for an updated version of Belletti and Rizzi's (1988) analysis of Experiencer Object psych verbs in which the putative Theme is a Source that is underlyingly c-commanded by the Experiencer.Keywords psych verbs · intensionality · concealed complement clauses · applicatives· English · Mandarin 1 Introduction: The problem of psych constructionsPsych constructions pose a number of challenges to syntactic theory. As shown in (1)- (2), Experiencer Subject (ES) and Experiencer Object (EO) psych verbs in English appear to assign the same θ-roles of Experiencer and Theme. 1 But the structural positions of the corresponding arguments are reversed or "flipped" in the two constructions (Lakoff 1970;Postal 1974). This apparent "θ-role inversion" challenges the Universal Alignment Hypothesis (UAH) of Perlmutter and Postal (1984) and the corresponding Uniformity of Theta Assignment Hypothesis (UTAH) of Baker (1988), which require identical thematic relationships to be realized in identical structural configurations. The exact identity of the non-experiencer θ-role in (1) and (2) is controversial; we label it here as THEME mainly for convience. The important point is that the same pair of roles appears to be involved in the two exemples; we return to a more careful discussion of this issue below. 2 In this study we concentrate on what Landau (2010) terms "Class I" psych verbs like fear and "Class II" psych verbs like frighten, largely putting aside discussion of his "Class III" psych verbs like appeal; the latter resemble the Class II type, but exhibit a dative preposition (to) on the experiencer (or, in other languages, dative case marking) as opposed to a simple accusative object (i): THEME EXPERIENCERThe idea appealed to Julie. (Landau 2010: 6) This is the Pre-Published Version.

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Psych verbs in English and Mandarin

Cheung

Larson

2014

Nat Lang Linguist Theory

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“…3 We will not discuss the violation of Binding Principle A (CHOMSKY, 1981), generated by postulation that the NP, extracted from the complex argument, occupies the adjunct position. There are researches, such as those by Giorgi (1984), Lebeaux (1985) and, for BP, the research of Cançado and Franchi (1999), which discuss the possibility of Principle A does not cover all cases of existing anaphors, so that explanations of another nature determine the functioning of anaphors.…”

Section: Nominal-level Semantic Constraints For the Factoring Of The ...mentioning

confidence: 99%

The Alternation of Verbs With Motivating Argument in Bp: A Type of Factoring of Argument

Meirelles

2023

Alfa, rev. linguíst. (São José Rio Preto)

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In this paper, we analyze a type of alternation that allows to express the complex constituent, which is originally in the object position, in two different syntactic positions, such as in the sentences: os alunos admiram o brilhantismo do professor [students admire the teacher’s brilliance]/os alunos admiram o professor pelo brilhantismo [students admire the teacher for his brilliance]. For the analysis of this phenomenon, we used the proposal of thematic papers as a cluster of discrete semantic properties of Cançado (2005) and Cançado and Amaral (2016)). We propose that the analyzed alternation results from the factoring of the complex verb argument, being determined by semantic restrictions of nominal and verbal level. At the first level, the complex arguments which can be factored must denote a possession relationship, as in the phrase o brilhantismo do professor [the brilliance of the teacher] or the relationship between an eventive name and its agent, such as the nominal phrase a excelente atuação do artista [the excellent performance of the artist] in the alternation o público aplaudiu a excelente atuação do artista [the audience applauded the excellent performance of the artist]/o público aplaudiu o artista por sua excelente atuação [the audience applauded the artist for his excellent performance]. At the verbal level, the verbs that perform this alternation can be grouped into a coarse-grained class (LEVIN, 2010), as they all attribute the semantic properties estativo [estative], objeto de referência [reference object] and objeto motivador [motivating object] to their complex argument, which can be factored. Finally, we propose that the alternation is motivated by pragmatic factors related to the informational structure of the analyzed statements.

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“…These restrictions raise the question of whether the exceptional effects are a really genuine property of EO verbs, or whether they mirror the aspectual and/or thematic properties that frequently accompany these verbs. In this vein, some accounts cast doubt on the relevance of BB to the structural analysis of EO verbs (Bouchard 1995;Arad 1998b;Cancado and Franchi 1999;Landau 2010). This view is supported from the observation that BB is also licensed in structures that do not contain psych verbs, such as the periphrastic causative structures in (6) or the examples in (7).…”

Section: Backward Binding As a Psych Effectmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Examples containing these anaphors are exempt from Binding Theory and do not represent the required anaphoric type for proper binding (Reinhart and Reuland 1993; see also further examples in Pollard and Sag 1992). Following these considerations, picture-NP anaphors and logophoric reflexives are in general not suitable to test BB as a psych effect due to their potential exemptness from binding requirements (Bouchard 1995;Cancado and Franchi 1999;Landau 2010). In contrast to English, German dismisses exempt reflexives; see Kiss (2012).…”

Section: Proper Binding Vs Coreferencementioning

confidence: 99%

Backward binding as a psych effect: A binding illusion?

Temme

Verhoeven

2017

Zeitschrift Für Sprachwissenschaft

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Bound anaphors inside subjects challenge the c-command requirement for binding. At least in some languages, experiencer-object verbs such as worry or please are reported to license this type of backward dependence. In many cases, the underlying facts are based on unstable intuitions potentially influenced by intervening factors, such as accidental coreference and binding illusions. This article reports the results of an experiment on backward binding with accusative and dative experiencer-object verbs in German; in this experiment, crucial sources of variation are controlled. The results show that verb class (experiencer-object vs. agentive) has a significant effect on variable binding, both for dative and for accusative verbs. This result cannot be accounted for through accidental coreference and is not reducible to effects of sentence aspect, the latter being correlated with the distinction between experiencerobject and agentive verbs. These findings are evidence for backward binding as a genuine psych effect in German.

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Exceptional Binding with Psych Verbs?

Cited by 15 publications

References 6 publications

Psych verbs in English and Mandarin

Psych verbs in English and Mandarin

The Alternation of Verbs With Motivating Argument in Bp: A Type of Factoring of Argument

Backward binding as a psych effect: A binding illusion?

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