Hostname: page-component-7b7567c8c-jswmv Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2026-11-15T11:43:34.965Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Exploring Similarities in ‘Seem’ Constructions with Experiencers in English and Spanish

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2026

Russell Simonsen
Russell Simonsen*
Affiliation:
Miami University
*
[simonsrl@miamioh.edu]
Get accessRights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Sentences that contain the verb ‘seem’, an experiencer, and an embedded infinitival phrase (e.g. Jill seems to me to be smart) have traditionally been considered acceptable in English, but not in Spanish. However, a corpus analysis reveals that such sentences are produced in both languages, most commonly with the embedded infinitives ‘be’ and ‘have’. Acceptability judgment tasks completed by fifty English speakers and fifty Spanish speakers further reveal that the embedded verbs ‘be’ and ‘have’ render this sentence structure most acceptable in both languages, and that the degree of contextual subjectivity in a sentence significantly affects acceptability. This study demonstrates how multiple data types can be used to uncover novel crosslinguistic patterns that have gone unnoticed in previous research that was based primarily on informal introspective judgments.

Keywords

acceptability judgmentscorpus analysisexperiencersparecer ‘seem‘seemsubjectivitysubject raising

Information

Type
Research Report
Information
Language , Volume 99 , Issue 1 , March 2023, pp. e18 - e34
Copyright
Copyright © 2023 Linguistic Society of America

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

Ausín, Adolfo, and Depiante, Marcela. 2000. On the syntax of parecer (to seem) with and without an experiencer. Hispanic linguistics at the turn of the millennium: Papers from the 3rd Hispanic Linguistics Symposium, ed. by Campos, Hector, Herburger, Elena, Morales-Front, Alfonso, and Walsh, Thomas J., 155–70. Somerville, MA: Cascadilla.Google Scholar
Bermúdez, Fernando. 2002. La estructura evidencial del castellano: Elevación de sujeto y gramaticalización. Romansk Forum 16(2). 19–29.Google Scholar
Bolinger, Dwight. 1967. Apparent constituents in surface structure. Word 23. 47–56. DOI: 10.1080/00437956.1967.11435466.10.1080/00437956.1967.11435466CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cabrelli Amaro, Jennifer, Amaro, João; and Rothman, Jason. 2015. The relationship between L3 transfer and structural similarity across development. Transfer effects in multilingual language development, ed. by Peukert, Hagen, 21–52. Philadelphia: John Benjamins.10.1075/hsld.4.02amaCrossRefGoogle Scholar
Campos-Dintrans, Gonzalo, Pires, Acrisio; and Rothman, Jason. 2014. Subject-to-subject raising and the syntax of tense in L2 Spanish: A full access approach. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 17(1). 38–55. DOI: 10.1017/S1366728912000661.10.1017/S1366728912000661CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Collins, Chris. 2005. A smuggling approach to raising in English. Linguistic Inquiry 36(2). 289–98. DOI: 10.1162/0024389053710701.10.1162/0024389053710701CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cornillie, Bert. 2007. Evidentiality and epistemic modality in Spanish (semi-)auxiliaries: A cognitive-functional approach. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Davies, Mark. 2008–. The corpus of contemporary American English (COCA): 560 million words, 1990–present. Online: https://corpus.byu.edu/coca/.Google Scholar
Davies, Mark. 2016–. Corpus del español: Web/Dialects: Two billion words, 21 countries. Online: http://www.corpusdelespanol.org/web-dial/.Google Scholar
Davies, Mark. 2017–. WordAndPhrase. Online: https://www.wordandphrase.info/span/.Google Scholar
Field, Andy. 2013. Discovering statistics using IBM SPSS statistics. Los Angeles: Sage.Google Scholar
Gibson, Edward, Piantadosi, Steven; and Fedorenko, Evelina. 2013. Quantitative methods in syntax/semantics research: A response to Sprouse and Almeida (2013). Language and Cognitive Processes 28(3). 229–40. DOI: 10.1080/01690965.2012.704385.10.1080/01690965.2012.704385CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hitz, John, and Francis, Elaine. 2016. On the usefulness of formal judgment tasks in syntax and in second-language research: The case of resumptive pronouns in English, Turkish, and Mandarin Chinese. Linguistics 54(6). 1241–18. DOI: 10.1515/ling-2016-0033.10.1515/ling-2016-0033CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Langacker, Ronald W. 1995. Raising and transparency. Language 17(1). 1–62. DOI: 10.2307/415962.10.2307/415962CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Marty, Paul, Chemla, Emmanuel; and Sprouse, Jon. 2020. The effect of three basic task features on the sensitivity of acceptability judgment tasks. Glossa: a journal of general linguistics 5(1):72. DOI: 10.5334/gjgl.980.Google Scholar
Mateu, Victoria, and Hyams, Nina. 2019. On the learnability of implicit arguments. Three streams of generative language acquisition research: Selected papers from the 7th meeting of Generative Approaches to Language Acquisition, ed. by Ionin, Tania and Rispoli, Matthew, 185–202. Philadelphia: John Benjamins.10.1075/lald.63.10matCrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mateu Martin, Victoria. 2016. Intervention effects in the acquisition of raising and control: Evidence from English and Spanish. Los Angeles: University of California, Los Angeles dissertation. Online: https://escholarship.org/uc/item/0nn172td.Google Scholar
Nuyts, Jan. 2001a. Epistemic modality, language, and conceptualization: A cognitive-pragmatic perspective. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.10.1075/hcp.5CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nuyts, Jan. 2001b. Subjectivity as an evidential dimension in epistemic modal expressions. Journal of Pragmatics 33(3). 383–400. DOI: 10.1016/S0378-2166(00)00009-6.10.1016/S0378-2166(00)00009-6CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nuyts, Jan. 2005. Brothers in arms? On the relations between cognitive and functional linguistics. Cognitive linguistics: Internal dynamics and interdisciplinary interaction, ed. by Ruiz de Mendoza Ibáñez, Francisco J. and Sandra Peña Cervel, M., 69–100. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. DOI: 10.1515/9783110197716.1.69.10.1515/9783110197716.1.69CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pérez Galdós, Benito. 2013 [1871]. El audaz: Historia de un radical de antaño. Barcelona: Barataria.Google Scholar
Porroche, María. 1990. Aspectos de la atribución en español. Zaragoza: Pórtico.Google Scholar
R Core Team. 2022. R: A language and environment for statistical computing. Vienna: R Foundation for Statistical Computing. Online: https://www.R-project.org/.Google Scholar
Real Academia Española (RAE). 2010. Nueva gramática de la lengua española. Madrid: Espasa Libros.Google Scholar
Schütze, Carson T., and Sprouse, Jon. 2013. Judgment data. Research methods in linguistics, ed. by Podesva, Robert J. and Sharma, Devyani, 27–50. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Sprouse, Jon. 2018. Acceptability judgments and grammaticality, prospects and challenges. Syntactic structures after 60 years: The impact of the Chomskyan revolution in linguistics, ed. by Hornstein, Norbert, Lasnik, Howard, Patel-Grosz, Pritty, and Yang, Charles, 195–224. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. DOI: 10.1515/9781501506925-199.10.1515/9781501506925-199CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sprouse, Jon, Schütze, Carson; and Almeida, Diogo. 2013. A comparison of informal and formal acceptability judgments using a random sample from Linguistic Inquiry 2001–2010. Lingua 134. 219–48. DOI: 10.1016/j.lingua.2013.07.002.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Torrego, Esther. 1996. Experiencers and raising verbs. Current issues in comparative grammar, ed. by Freidin, Robert, 101–20. Dordrecht: Springer. DOI: 10.1007/978-94-009-0135-3_5.Google Scholar
Torrego, Esther. 1998. The dependencies of objects. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.10.7551/mitpress/2337.001.0001CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Supplementary material: File

Simonsen supplementary material

Simonsen supplementary material
Download Simonsen supplementary material(File)
File 208.8 KB