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Inversion with Certain French Experiencer Verbs

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 March 2026

Géraldine Legendre
Géraldine Legendre*
Affiliation:
University of Colorado, Boulder
*
Department of Linguistics, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO 80309-0295
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Abstract

As in a number of other languages, certain psychological verbs in French display an interesting relation between thematic roles and surface grammatical relations: the theme appears as a superficial subject, while the experiencer acts as an indirect object. This paper argues that in French the superficial subject (theme) is a direct object at a deeper level, while the superficial indirect object (dative experiencer) is a subject at a deeper level. This contrasts with the analysis of Italian by Belletti & Rizzi 1988, which emphasizes that the dative experiencer is strictly an indirect object. In this paper, it is demonstrated that French dative experiencer verbs can be straightforwardly analyzed within Relational Grammar as Inversion predicates occurring in multilevel structures whose initial subject demotes to indirect object. These results provide a challenge to GB analyses of psychological verbs; Belletti & Rizzi's analysis, for example, does not extend from Italian to French.

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
Language , Volume 65 , Issue 4 , December 1989 , pp. 752 - 782
Copyright
Copyright © 1989 by Linguistic Society of America

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