Nominative objects in psych verb constructions: formal and experimental approaches
Date
2024
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Publisher
University of Delaware
Abstract
This dissertation investigates the nominative object constructions (NOCs) in Korean psych verb constructions, with a focus on their potential to be double nominative arrays (NOM-NOM). This study explores the relationship between morphological marking and thematic roles in NOCs and their impact on argument accessibility. The alignment hypothesis for psych verbs has long been studied, and I extend it to consider the morphological aspects of argument realization in subject experiencer verb constructions in Korean. The study includes experimental investigations which consist of two acceptability judgment experiments, a self-paced reading experiment, and corpus analyses. The findings suggest that the relatively low acceptability, longer reading times, and low frequency of NOCs (as opposed to canonical NOM-ACC transitive non-NOCs) are due to the combination of the presence of nominative object and double case array, accompanied by an optional non-agentive light verb. The alignment constraint and distinctness constraint provide theoretical frameworks to explain these patterns across acceptability, comprehension, and production. A formal syntactic analysis is proposed, which adopts the split light verb systems (Mahajan 2012) and explains nominative object case assignment (Multiple Agree; Hiraiwa 2001, 2005) in NOCs. It also accounts for the case alternation on the subject and subject-object asymmetry, suggesting that the object properties impact the acceptability and processing of NOCs and interact with the alignment and distinctness constraints. Overall, the findings of this dissertation demonstrate that the production and comprehension of NOCs are influenced by processing constraints and distributional frequencies.
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Keywords
Double case, Experimental syntax, Korean psych, Nominative object, Psych verbs, Syntax