Intransitive sentences containing non-pronominal psychological verbs with an experiencer subject

Abstract

This article describes and compares the behaviour of non-pronominal psychological verbs of emotion in Catalan that form intransitive sentences with an experiencer subject. Some of these verbs participate in mono-argumental sentences: one group is formed by predicates such as penar ‘agonise’ or xalar ‘have fun’, although others in this group may also have transitive uses (gruar ‘be overcome’, patir ‘suffer’); this group differs from a second group in which the experiencer subject is a patient of an ergative sentence, with an alternating causative function (aŀlucinar ‘be amazed’, escarmentar ‘learn your lesson’) or without this (defallir ‘give out’, llanguir ‘languish’). A third group of predicates form bi-argumental intransitive sentences with an oblique complement (gaudir de ‘enjoy’, simpatitzar amb ‘sympathise with’). In some cases, the constraint on bare postverbal noun phrases and the construction of a subordinate clause with a thematic subjunctive (both features of emotional verbs) allow certain verbs to be classified within or excluded from these groups. These verbs show a complex mosaic of meanings and alternations, a manifestation of remarkable semantic and syntactic flexibility.