Argument realisation of experience processes: a synchronic and diachronic account.

In the sentence the dog ate my homework the verb ate has two arguments: the dog and my homework. The way these arguments are syntactically realised here as a subject and a direct object is known in syntactic theory as argument realisation. This research proposal is about the argument realisation of verbs that express an experience process, like frighten, amaze or irritate. The meaning of such verbs makes it difficult to fit them into a prototypical transitivity structure with a subject and a direct object. I want to investigate what kind of constructions these verbs are used with, what differences there are between the verbs, and how the argument realisation changes in the course of time. Each of these three issues takes up existing gaps in the research on verb syntax. The basic assumption is that argument realisation (and syntax in general) is semantically and pragmatically motivated: the choice for a particular construction is not a matter of blind coincidence or arbitrariness in the lexicon, but expresses a specific meaning. This basic assumption is elaborated on in a usage-based construction grammar. Through extensive corpus research, in which use will be made of multivariate statistical techniques, the precise impact of factors that are known from previous research to play a role in verb syntax and of new factors will be calculated and explained. As my field of expertise is Dutch syntax, the focus will be on the situation in Dutch, although other languages and insights from language typology will, of course, be taken into account as well.

Keywords:Syntax, Morphology, Diachronic, Argument structure, Argument realisation, Experience processes, Semantic role, Syntactic alternations

Disciplines:Linguistics, Language studies, Literary studies