The grammar of object experiencer psych verbs: theoretical, computational and experimental analyses of reflexive binding in German

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Tibor Kiss
• Subject Area: General and Comparative Linguistics, Experimental Linguistics, Typology, Non-European Languages
• Term: from 2020 to 2024
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 437144413

The realization of reflexive pronouns within stimulus arguments of object experiencer psych verbs (OE psych verbs) has become the topic of a controversial debate, since the possible binder, the experiencer argument, appears to be an object binding into the subject. The grammaticality of the construction is attested for many languages, but its status in German has remained unclear. German can thus be employed as a touchstone for comparative theories of reflexive binding. It should be noted, however, that there are very few proposals concerning the theoretical implications of a possible grammaticality or ungrammaticality of the pattern in German, and these suffer from an insufficient empirical basis. The two main goals of the present proposals are thus to provide a solid data base for the construction in German and to use the data base to develop a model of reflexive binding that takes the (un-)grammaticality of binding into the stimulus of OE psych verbs in German into account. It is necessary to combine analyses of various aspects that have hitherto been studied in isolation only. Analyses of reflexivization in German do not cover word order regularities, and vice versa. The same holds for the inclusion of the verb’s semantics, and alternative subcategorization patterns. The project will thus combine these isolated theoretical strands. The verbs will receive a corpus-based analysis, which focuses in particular on their semantics and their possibly subcategorization frames. Even more problematic is the concept of a 'picture noun'. It has been assumed to be a trigger for the construction but has never received a proper definition. Combining methods from computational linguistics and corpus linguistics, we aim to provide a formal characterization of the pertinent nouns, which also takes competing constructions and selectional restrictions imposed by the verbs into account. These analyses do not only provide a solid basis for the two major ingredients of the construction, the OE psych verbs and the 'picture nouns', they also form the prerequisites for three experimental studies that concern the order of arguments, the reflexivization into the stimulus, and finally possible selectional restrictions on animacy in OE psych verb constructions. Experimental studies are the methods of choice here since we have to deal with constructions including at least three problems that are thus extremely unlikely to occur in corpora showing all required conditions. The results of the experimental studies will then serve to define an empirically based theoretical model of reflexivization within the stimulus of OE psych verbs in German. Linguistics would then not only be able to determine the grammaticality status of the construction in German, but also its implications for a comparative theory of reflexive binding.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants