Original scientific paper
The Argument Structure of Psychological Verbs in Croatian
Lidija Šaravanja
orcid.org/0000-0002-1084-2872
; Poslijediplomski sveučilišni studij Jezikoslovlje
Abstract
This paper is based on the theoretical framework of generative grammar and uses its
methodology for studying the behaviour of psychological predicates in Croatian, and for
studying the integration of arguments within their argument structure. It observes syntactic,
morphosyntactic and semantic features of the predicates in context of other similar research in
the English language (Grimshaw, 1990, Radford, 1998). Based on the integration of syntactic
and semantic properties of their arguments, psychological predicates are divided into two groups,
named in several different ways in English. In this paper they are called psihološki glagoli
doživljavanja (PGD) ’psychological verbs of experiencing’ and psihološki glagoli uzrokovanja
(PGU) ’psychological verbs of causing’. Besides having other distinctive features, the two
groups differ in the manner of aligning syntactic and semantic prominence of their arguments,
whereas the existence of the external argument is being determined not only by its position in
the V’ interprojection, but also by the overlapping of the syntactic category of subject and the
semantically most prominent argument in the argument structure (Grimshaw, 1990). Author’s
intention in the second part of the paper is to determine category selection features of all
possible appearances of internal and external arguments in the argument structure of PGDs
and PGUs, as well as to determine the morphosyntactic features of the ways verbs transform
from one group into the other. While observing the processes of nominalization and anaphora
binding, it becomes apparent that the additional criteria are necessary for determining the
external argument or the subject of a clause, because some conclusions based on studying
English phenomena do not apply to every situation in Croatian. This mostly refers to including
the pragmatic criterion to the applied levels of analysis. The paper defines certain regularities
in the behaviour of the argument structure of psychological predicates, yet some questions are
left open for further research.
Keywords
psychological verbs; argument structure; generative grammar; Croatian language
Hrčak ID:
74649
URI
Publication date:
5.12.2011.
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