Phy inside psych

Isabelle Haïk (1)

1 CRISCO - Centre de recherche inter-langues sur la signification en contexte

Certain psych constructions may be formed on a regular pattern across languages, that of a psychological predicate or phrase having a physical predicate as a " root " and not a psych one. Those constructions may be words, like some Ving and Vant adjectives in English and French, and they may be phrasal, like the desiderative construction in Finnish (Pylkkänen 2000a), among others. Here, we mostly study the adjectives, such as marrant 'funny', jaw-dropping and effing. They are [ [ V phy ] ing ] psychA phy-inside-psych constructs which literally mean 'which causes the physical effect usually triggered by the emotion/sensation that it causes', and actually mean 'which causes that emotion/sensation', a psych meaning. They are exceptional because, contrary to all other Ving forms, they do not mean 'which Vs'. They mean 'which causes (one) to V'. In this unexpected meaning, these forms introduce their own cause participant, which will lead us to investigate the syntax of Object Experiencer morphological and syntactic constructions.

Mots clés: Psych constructions; -Ing adjectives; Desideratives; Object Experiencer constructions in syntax andmorphology

Domaines: Linguistique

Isabelle Haïk. Phy inside psych. 2017. ⟨hal-01528241⟩