The syntax of accusative and dative Experiencers in Polish
Anna Bondaruk | John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin
The chapter examines the syntax of accusative and dative Experiencers found with stative Object Experiencer verbs in Polish with a view to determining whether they are associated with an unaccusative structure (Belletti & Rizzi, 1988; Pesetsky, 1995; Landau, 2010a) or are simply transitive (Grafmiller, 2013). Binding and passivization properties of the two types of Experiencer in Polish indicate that they are syntactically special, with accusative Experiencers forming a part of complex unergative structure as in Bennis (2004), and dative Experiencers occupying a Spec,vP position. The analysis of two linear orders of accusative and dative Experiencers with respect to the Target/Subject Matter (hence, T/SM) argument demonstrates that in the Experiencer-first order, the Experiencer is scrambled to an A’-position, whereas the T/SM remains in situ, while in the T/SM-first order, the T/SM comes to occupy the Spec,TP position, while the Experiencer is not affected by movement.
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