Argumentstrukturen und deren syntaktische Abbildung: Psych-Verben im Russischen

Luka Szucsich

In this paper I give an account for the mapping of argument structural information into syntax discussing the notoriously problematic psych verbs in Russian. I argue for an approach where certain relations in syntactic derivations correspond to certain, rather broad interpretive types. A causative interpretation is syntactically represented by the relation between the Spec-of-vP and the complex head [vo V0+v0], the relation between the latter and the complement of V0 (=Кdirect object) establishes an affectedness interpretation and the relation between the two arguments of V0 (its specifier and its complement) yields an stative interpretation. Moreover, different layers of the lexical projections of the verb correspond to different predicates within the (decomposed) semantic representation of the verbal entry. Subject experiencer verbs of the type любить 'to love' are stative predicates where the theme doesn't cause the mental state of the more prominent experiencer. With object experiencer verbs of the type (о)беспокоить 'to trouble' the "theme" actually is the causer of the situation. The same holds for verbs of the type нравиться 'to appeal to' which, however, seem to be unaccusative transitive verbs.

Linguistische Beiträge zur Slavistik. XI. JungslavistInnen-Treffen Cambridge 2002. Hg. Björn Hansen. München: Sagner 2004 (= Specimina Philologiae Slavicae 140), 143–159.