Open AccessPsychological verbs and their arguments
Author(s) -
Dària Serés,
M. Teresa Espinal
Publication year - 2018
Publication title -
borealis
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
ISSN - 1893-3211
DOI - 10.7557/1.7.1.4404
Subject(s) - transitive relation , plural , subject (documents) , object (grammar) , linguistics , property (philosophy) , psychology , computer science , epistemology , philosophy , mathematics , combinatorics , library science
In this paper it is argued that objects of subject experiencer psychological verbs do not have kind reference, but rather refer to individual object entities: specific individuals, generic plurals, and even entity correlates of a property. We argue that objects of transitive subject experiencer psychological verbs must refer to atoms or sums of atoms, because they presuppose the existence of the Target-of-Emotion. Focusing mainly on data from various Romance languages and Russian, we also argue that the Target-of-emotion of psychological verbs such as odiar ‘hate’ cannot refer to a kind entity, conceived as an abstract individual or an abstract sortal concept, but instead can refer to a maximal sum of individual entities, instantiated through a generic plural.