The syntax of accusative and dative Experiencers in Polish

Abstract

The chapter examines the syntax of accusative and dative Experiencers found with stative Object Experiencer verbs in Polish with a view to determining whether they are associated with an unaccusative structure (Belletti & Rizzi, 1988; Pesetsky, 1995; Landau, 2010a) or are simply transitive (Grafmiller, 2013). Binding and passivization properties of the two types of Experiencer in Polish indicate that they are syntactically special, with accusative Experiencers forming a part of complex unergative structure as in Bennis (2004), and dative Experiencers occupying a Spec,vP position. The analysis of two linear orders of accusative and dative Experiencers with respect to the Target/Subject Matter (hence, T/SM) argument demonstrates that in the Experiencer-first order, the Experiencer is scrambled to an A’-position, whereas the T/SM remains in situ, while in the T/SM-first order, the T/SM comes to occupy the Spec,TP position, while the Experiencer is not affected by movement.

On Scalarity in the Verbal Domain. The Case of Polish Psych Verbs. Part 1: Polish Perfective Psych Verbs and Their Prefixes

“…unaccusative predicates in the piacere 'like'-class, the verbs occurring in the Polish inverted Exp ACC > S NOM construction are double ergatives and not unaccusatives (Bondaruk 2020). Except for the difference in the case-marking of the S argument of nienawidzić I and znienawidzić P 'hate' , grammatical aspect does not affect case assignment and it does not affect c-selection.…”

“…Alexiadou and Anagnostopulou 2020). Unambiguously stative verbs in ( 19) and ( 20) are argued to be internal arguments in a double ergative syntax in Bondaruk (2020). On this analysis, Exp is merged higher than S VP-internally and the surface S > Exp order is derived by movement (cf.…”

“…Imperfective and perfective Polish psych verbs do not differ in their core lexical meaning and their argument structure and argument realization patterns are not affected by grammatical aspect, except for the verbs in the class of verbs with Exp ACC . Unlike unambiguously stative verbs in this class, whose Exp argument is VP-internal (Bondaruk 2020), ambiguous verbs in this class may map Exp onto an external argument depending on the event structure. I will return to the question of the relation between argument structure and event structure of Polish psych verbs in the next section.…”

“…( 24)). The argument in the dative case, which is non-structural case in Polish, is an external argument (EA) in the specifier of vP, as suggested for Polish in Bondaruk (2020). Alternatively, it is an EA in the specifier of ApplP, as suggested for parallel structures in Greek in Alexiadou and Anagnostopoulou (2020).…”

“…This section draws on the work on Polish psych verbs in Biały (2005),Bondaruk and Szymanek (2007), Rozwadowska(2003, 2012, 2020),Bondaruk (2019), andBondaruk (2020).…”