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Julian Andrej Rott, Elisabeth Verhoeven* and Paola Fritz-Huechante
Directionality in the psych alternation: a
quantitative cross-linguistic study
https://doi.org/10.1515/lingty-2021-0060
Received October 1, 2021; accepted January 15, 2023; published online April 11, 2023
Abstract: Languages display global preferences for transitive, intransitive or
underspecified roots in their verbal lexicon and correspondingly for the use of
processes for deriving related concepts with different valency (cf. Nichols,
Johanna, David A. Peterson & Jonathan Barnes. 2004. Transitivizing and detran-
sitivizing languages. Linguistic Typology 8. 149–211). This classification is
particularly relevant when applied to psych verbs, since variable linking is a
widely recognized feature of this domain. This paper reports on the results of a
larger typological study, involving 26 languages from 15 language families, aimed
at investigating directionality in the psych alternation. In our data, most lan-
guages show preferences for one of the alternation strategies (augmented,
reduced, undirected) which is then pervasive in their psych inventory, while the
alternative patterns are marginally represented. Furthermore, the Indo-
European languages of Europe stand out in being detransitivizing in the psych
domain whereas transitivizing and underspecified languages do not show areal
patterns. Moreover, we found a significant impact of alignment type on the
occurrence of alternation strategies to the effect that reducing strategies are
significantly less frequent in languages with ergative traits compared to lan-
guages without ergative traits. Our data also showed a positive effect of alignment
in the undirected strategies meaning that undirected pairs are significantly more
frequent in languages with ergative traits.
Keywords: anticausativization; causative alternation; detransitivizing languages;
psych alternation; transitivizing languages; valence orientation
*Corresponding author: Elisabeth Verhoeven [eˈli:zabɛtfɛɐ
ˈhu:vn
], Institut für deutsche Sprache und
Linguistik, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Berlin, Germany, E-mail: elisabeth.verhoeven@hu-berlin.de
Julian Andrej Rott [ˈjuːli
aːn andʁɜjʁɔt] and Paola Fritz-Huechante [pa.ˈo.la ˈfɾits ue.ˈtʃan.te], Institut
für deutsche Sprache und Linguistik, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Berlin, Germany,
E-mail: julian.rott@hu-berlin.de (J.A. Rott), paola.fritz@hu-berlin.de (P. Fritz-Huechante)
Linguistic Typology 2024; 28(1): 147–191
Open Access. © 2023 the author(s), published by De Gruyter. This work is licensed under the
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
1 The characteristics of psych predicates
The present study aims to show that the unique conceptual and semantic features of
psych predicates interact in a typologically informative way with the parameter of
VALENCE ORIENTATION as proposed by Nichols et al. (2004) and subsequent work. Nichols
et al.’s (2004) study of alternating predicates relies on a pre-selected list of 18 verbs
describing a state, change of state or going-on (the PLAIN verbs), which alternate with a
corresponding semantic causative (the INDUCED verbs). The list accommodates a variety
of related factors such as semantic heterogeneity of the predicate as well as different
levels of agency and independence onthe part of the alternating participant. Further, it
is divided into two subsets along the animacy of the S/O argument, a factor which is
shown to deeply impact alternation patterns (animacy itself being a category of utmost
cognitive and developmental relevance in language, see e.g. Langacker 1991; Rakison
and Poulin-Dubois 2001; Tomasello et al. 2005). We argue that psych verbs present a
special case in this context. Landau (2010: 137) defines psych verbs as follows:
(1) A psych verb is any verb that carries psychological entailments with respect to
one of its arguments (the experiencer). A psychological entailment involves an
individual being in a certain mental state.
We take (1) to imply three distinct ontological components
1
required for every psych
predicate (see e.g. Arad 2002; Bouchard 1995; Croft 1993; Jackendoff1990; Landau
2010; Langacker 1991; Matisoff1986; Talmy 1985; Verhoeven 2007):
(2) a. Mental state: the psychological content of the predicate
b. Experiencer: the entity accommodating the mental state
c. Stimulus: the entity eliciting the mental state
The mental state holds within the experiencer (2b), which therefore must be sentient
and thus animate (cf. Verhoeven 2007; Kutscher 2009). The mental state (2a) is
brought about by or directed towards the stimulus (2c), which in turn remains
unaffected by it. The stimulus may cover different more specificflavors such as
causer, target, subject matter with respect to the mental state (Pesetsky 1995). In so
far as the stimulus has properties of a causer the respective psych verb can be
classified as INDUCED in terms of Nichols et al. (2004) and may participate in the
causative alternation. As will be detailed in Section 2, alternations involving psych
verbs, sometimes referred to under the cover term psych alternation show some
overlap with the causative alternation. However, the psych alternation as conceived
of in the present work is not identical nor is it a subtype of the causative alternation.
1Despite using terminology commonly associated with approaches centered around θ-roles, we do
not intend to make any claims regarding the discreteness of these categories as grammatical entities.
148 Rott et al.
Against this background, consider Nichols et al.’s (2004: 156) subset of ‘animate
verbs’,
2
which is given below:
(3) PLAIN INDUCED
a. laugh ∼make laugh,amuse,strike as funny
b. die ∼kill
c. sit ∼seat,make sit,have sit
d. eat ∼feed,give food
e. learn,know ∼teach
f. see ∼show
g. be/become angry ∼anger,make angry
h. fear,be afraid ∼frighten,scare
i. hide,go into hiding ∼hide,conceal,put into hiding
Depending on how strictly the conceptual boundaries of the definition in (1) are
interpreted, verbs with psychological entailments are over-represented in the sub-
sample compared to other semantic domains: Psych verbs proper make up a third (3a,
3
3g, 3h) of the items, and the proportion rises to just over half when cognition verbs are
included as well (3a, 3e, 3f, 3g, 3h). If we assume that the propensity for PLAIN ∼INDUCED
alternations is correlated with the perceived likelihood of the event described by the
verb to occur spontaneously (Haspelmath 1993), i.e. without an agent, this is hardly
surprising, as all predicates with high volitionality should be excluded (cf. Hopper and
Thompson 1980; Langacker 1991; Levin 1993; Rappaport Hovav and Levin 2012).
Assuming that the majority of verbs which prototypically license animate/human ar-
guments imply intent (cf. e.g. Jarvella and Sinnott 1972; Dowty 1991; pertinent examples
are verbs of movement like walk,run,climb,crawl, etc.; verbs describing modes of
direct interaction like thank,command,instruct,insult,inform,high five;verbs
describing other highly conventionalized social processes like marry,punish, arrest,
convict,hire,pay,bribe,nominate,betray,etc.),psychverbsemergeuniquelyatthe
intersection of ‘animate’and ‘alternating’,afactwhichisalsorecognizedbyNichols
et al. (2004: 173). Psych verbs thus are exceptional within VALENCE ORIENTATION typology in
encoding the prototypical animate undergoer argument for the domain while at the
same time embodying a host of features that sets them apart behaviorally from other
predicates. It is due to the latter that they have been featuring prominently in other
lines of syntactic and semantic research for well over three decades now (see e.g.
Belletti and Rizzi 1988; Dowty 1991; Landau 2010; Pesetsky 1995, among many others).
2Those verbal pairs where the alternating argument is animate are called ‘animate verbs’in Nichols
et al. (2004).
3Here we refer to the induced verb amuse, the corresponding plain form being be/become amused.
Directionality in the psych alternation 149
Afurtherdifference is that unlike many other verbs which undergo PLAIN ∼INDUCED
alternations, psych verbs describe states which are largely intangible while still strongly
impacting the affected entity, often entailing social ramifications of some kind (cf. John-
son-Laird and Oatley 1989). It follows that compared to events which are independently
observable, the conceptualization and lexicalization of psych processes is bound to be
more strongly culturally informed, and therefore highly cross-linguistically heteroge-
neous (Boster 2005; Hupka et al. 1999; Rott and Verhoeven 2019; Wierzbicka 1986). This
again attests to their fruitfulness as a typological testing groundfor alternations arising at
the interface between event-specific semantics and syntax reflecting phylogenetics.
2 Valence alternation in the psych domain
Before beginning the discussion proper, a clarification of scope is in order, as there
are multiple ‘alternation’phenomena which have been discussed for the psych
domain. As briefly touched upon in the introduction, one of the best-known prop-
erties of psych verbs is that they pose a problem for theories of argument linking (cf.
Baker 1988; Belletti and Rizzi 1988; Croft 1993; Pesetsky 1995; Haspelmath 2001;
Kutscher 2009; Landau 2010). That is, they seem to uniquely map their arguments
onto opposing syntactic functions. This claim rests on the juxtaposition of ostensibly
synonymous yet converse structures such as (4) with counter-factual evidence from
canonical transitives such as (5) (cf. Belletti and Rizzi 1988: 292):
4
(4) a. I fear the meetings.
b. The meetings frighten me.
(5) a. I attend the meetings.
b. **The meetings V me.
5
Nichols et al.’s (2004)own setup in (3h) above also follows this tradition, treating fear in
(4a) as the PLAIN exponent of a predicateindicating a state of apprehension and frighten
in (4b) as its INDUCED alternant. There is no synchronically transparent morphological
4A third possible alternant that is discussed in some approaches realizes the experiencer as a dative
argument, resulting in a triple opposition:
(i) a. I like the meetings.
b. The meetings please me.
c. The meetings appeal to me.
Since forms such as (i-c) are outside the scope of binary PLAIN ∼INDUCED alternations, they will not
figure in our account.
5A double asterisk ** is used to indicate unattested forms.
150 Rott et al.
correspondence between the English (eng) forms –they are paired based solely on
their shared meaning, that is –frighten is the lexical causative of fear. Thus, many of
the ‘classic’sets of psych verbs with linking alternations are formally suppletive (e.g.
fear ∼frighten,like ∼please,hate ∼irritate,resent ∼embitter etc. from Pesetsky 1995:
18). However, Levin and Grafmiller (2013) show that despite the obvious semantic
similarities, such pairs require careful examination before a robust alternation can be
established (see also Ruwet 1972 for similar concerns for French). Since the focus of the
present investigation is cross-linguistic comparison, such case by case testing is not
feasible. We therefore limit our focus to pairs with a common lexical root. Such pairs,
illustrated in (6) from Pesetsky (1995: 18) are attested in all languages in Nichols et al.’s
(2004) sample, and it can be assumed that no language relies on suppletion alone.
(6) a. We puzzled over Sue’s remarks.
b. Sue’s remarks puzzled us.
It is noteworthy that the morphological relation between the members of a given
pair correlates with distinctive syntactic patterns: In suppletive pairs such as (4),
both verbs are transitive, mapping their arguments onto identical, yet opposing
syntactic functions across the alternation. Derivational
6
pairs such as (6) on the
other hand tend to juxtapose a transitive form with an intransitive. Interestingly,
despite these differences these types are typically not kept apart (see e.g., Pesetsky
1995). Nichols et al. (2004: 161ff.) identify four major kinds of such derivational
relations
7
that can hold between PLAIN and INDUCED alternants. We adapt their
classification in a slightly simplified way to accommodate specificfeaturesofthe
psych domain, yielding the three-way system given in (7).
(7) a. Augmented: PLAIN ⇒INDUCED
b. Reduced: INDUCED ⇒PLAIN
c. Undirected: PLAIN ⇔INDUCED
Regardless of derivational directionality, a PLAIN alternant in the psych domain en-
tails that the construction centers the experiencer, while an INDUCED alternant centers
the stimulus. Hence, we call the former an experiencer-oriented predicate and the
latter a stimulus-oriented predicate. The most common instantiations of this struc-
ture are experiencer subject (ES) for the former and experiencer object verbs (EO) for
the latter. Augmented pairs (cf. (8)) and reduced pairs (cf. (9)) are defined and
operationalized in the same way as the typology proposed by Nichols et al. (2004), i.e.
via a formal asymmetry between alternants.
6‘Derivation’is taken to include cases of morphologically zero-marked conversion as in (6).
7Suppletive pairs (PLAIN ⇎INDUCED), which are excluded from this discussion, are labeled
‘indeterminate’.
Directionality in the psych alternation 151
(8) Khoekhoegowab (naq; Khoe, Southern Africa): Augmented
a. PLAIN
Khoe-s ge (nēkhoe-b ǀkha) nî ǁaixa.
person-F.SG.SBJ IND (this person-M.SG with) FUT be.angry
‘The woman will be angry (at this man).’
b. INDUCED
Nēkhoe-b ge khoe-s-a nî ǁaixa kai.
this person-M.SG.SBJ IND person-F.SG-OBJ FUT be.angry CAUS
‘This man will make the woman angry.’
(9) Spanish (spa; Romance, Europe): Reduced
a. PLAIN
Sofía se alegr-a (con el/por el/del concierto).
Sophie REFL make.happy-3.SG with the/for the/of.the concert
‘Sophie gets happy about the concert.’
b. INDUCED
El concierto alegr-a a Sofía.
the concert make.happy-3.SG to Sophie
‘The concert makes Sophie happy.’
Our classification uses the category (7c) undirected which combines pairs classified in
Nichols et al.’s (2004) approach as either ‘neutral’or ‘indeterminate’, to the afore-
mentioned exclusion of suppletive pairs (lexical causatives). The defining feature of
undirected pairs is the equal formal complexity across both alternants. In neutral
pairs, there is overt marking at different morphosyntactic levels, comprising forms
with double derivation (external morphological modification, cf. (10)), ablaut
8
(in-
ternal morphological modification, cf. (11)) and auxiliary change (syntactic/analytic
modification, cf. (12)).
(10) Amharic (amh; South Semitic, East Africa): Double deriving
a. PLAIN
ልጁ(በአባቱ ሞት)ተከፋ.
lɨj-u (bä-abbat-u mot) tä-käffa
child-DEF (LOC-father-DEF death) PASS-be.sad:PFV.3M.SG
‘The child is sad (due to his father’s death).’
8Nichols et al. (2004) use this term to mean ‘any morphophonological change’, and we adopt their
usage here.
152 Rott et al.
b. INDUCED
የአባቱ ሞት ልጁን አስከፋው.
yä-abbat-u mot lɨj-u-n as-käffa-w
POSS-father-DEF death child-DEF-ACC CAUS-be.sad:PFV.3M.SG-3M.SG.OBJ
‘The death of his father made the child sad.’
(11) German
9
(deu; Germanic, Europe): Ablaut
a. PLAIN
Der Mann erschrick-t (über das Geräusch).
the:NOM man:NOM get.startled-3SG.PRS (over the:ACC noise:ACC)
‘The man gets startled (by the noise).’
b. INDUCED
Das Geräusch erschreck-t den Mann.
the:NOM noise:NOM startle-3SG.PRS the:ACC man:ACC
‘The noise startles the man.’
(12) Basque (eus; Isolate, Europe): Auxiliary change
a. PLAIN
Gizon-a (ipuin-a-rekin) poz-tu da.
man-DEF.ABS (fairy.tale-DEF-COM) delight-PFV AUX:3SG
‘The man was/got delighted (with the fairy tale).’
b. INDUCED
Ipuin-a-k gizon-a poz-tu du.
fairty.tale-DEF-ERG man-DEF.ABS delight-PFV AUX:3SG.3SG
‘The fairy tale delighted the man.’
Indeterminate pairs lack this differentiation, consisting of ambitransitive pairs (cf.
(13) and the English example in (6)) and pairs whose alternants are only distin-
guished by conjugation class (cf. (14)).
(13) Mandarin Chinese
10
(zho; Sino-Tibetan, East Asia): Ambitransitive
a. PLAIN
这个女人很感动。
zh`
ege nǚr´
en hěngǎndòng.
this woman very touch
‘The woman feels touched.’
9Note that this is an isolated example from our German data and is not representative of the overall
structures of the German psych domain.
10 Again, this example is not representative of the overall valence orientation of the Chinese psych
domain, but rather one of the minor strategies found in our sample.
Directionality in the psych alternation 153
b. INDUCED
朋友感动了这个女人。
p´
engyou gǎndòng le zh`
ege nǚr´
en.
friend touch PFV this woman
‘The friends have made the woman feel touched.’
(14) Hebrew (heb; Semitic, West Asia): Conjugation class change
11
a. PLAIN
.( הילדהנעצבה)מהצעצוע
ha-yalda ne’ecva (me-ha-ca’acua).
DEF-girl get.depressed (from-DEF-toy)
‘The girl got depressed (from the toy).’
b. INDUCED
.הצעצועהעציבאתהילדה
ha-ca’acua he’eciv et ha-yalda.
DEF-toy make.depressed ACC DEF-girl
‘The toy depressed the girl.’
These observations are then used to typologize languages based on the predominant
relations which hold across the verbs in the sample. Thus, as in Nichols et al. (2004), a
language in which most pairs are (7a) augmented (i.e. the bases are intransitive) is
called transitivizing, while a language in which most pairs are (7b) reduced (i.e. the
bases are transitive) is called detransitivizing. A language in which most pairs are (7c)
undirected is called underspecified in our account. Cross-linguistically, alternating
psych verbs corresponding to Pesetsky’s example given in (6) instantiate all three
types in (7), as we will show in more detail in Section 4.1.
The examples discussed so far instantiate cases of the psych alternation where
the mental state as identified in (2) is lexicalized as (part of the) verbal predicate
(cf. so-called incorporated psych verbs in Bouchard 1995). Next to this type of
11 The central constituent of lexemes in Semitic languages such as Hebrew is the consonantal root,
i.e. an abstract sequence of consonants from which actual lexical items are formed via non-
concatenative morphology. Hebrew verbs distinguish between seven such patterns (called binyanim
in Hebrew grammar tradition, ‘conjugation classes’for our purposes) which combine with roots to
form full verb forms (Coffin and Bolozky 2005: Ch. 4). The conjugation classes often superimpose a
certain shade of meaning over the lexical semantics of the root, and although the exact semantics
which result from the root-pattern combination are arbitrary, there are pairings of classes that when
combined with the same root result in relations that equate, at least roughly, to operations such as e.g.
passivization, inchoativization or causativization (Arad 2005). The example in (14a) shows the root
√ʕcb in combination with the so-called NIF’AL pattern yielding an inchoative meaning, while in (14b),
the HIF’IL pattern is used to indicate causation (cf. Glinert 2005:42–45, 55f.).
154 Rott et al.
lexicalization it is also common in the languages of the world to encode the mental
state as a nominal constituent while the verb has a more general meaning and
functions as a kind of light verb, as illustrated in (15) from Irish (cf. non-incorporated
psych verbs in Bouchard 1995).
(15) Irish (gle)
a. PLAIN
Tá d´
eistin ar an bhfear (leis na cruimheanna).
is:SG disgust on DEF man (with DEF maggots)
‘The man is disgusted (by the maggots).’
b. INDUCED
Cuir-eann na cruimheanna d´
eistin ar an bhfear.
put-PL DEF maggots disgust on DEF man
‘The maggots disgust the man.’
The alternation in (15) is not centered around the experiencer argument, i.e., it is not
the experiencer argument that alternates between subject and object function across
the alternation. Rather, the experiencer is an oblique argument that remains in a low
syntactic position, while it is the psych nominal which changes its syntactic function
from subject (15a) to object (15b). Whether such structures should be considered as
instantiations of an alternating psych structure bears some further discussion. On
purely technical grounds, such constructions fail to fulfil the criterion of an inter-
change between experiencer-oriented and stimulus-oriented structures (see also Rott
et al. 2020). However, seeing as the change between the PLAIN and the INDUCED forms does
entail a change in which either the mental state or the stimulus is centered, and since
the emotion is conceived of as a stage-level predicate for the experiencer, thus justi-
fying the classification of such constructions as experiencer predicates, we treat these
alternations as licit even though their structural makeup differs from the psych
alternation, as instantiated by incorporated psych verbs (Bouchard 1995; see examples
(10)–(14)). This finds further support from the fact that such complex, tripartite
structures are the unmarked way to lexicalize psych situations in languages with a
preponderance of non-incorporated psych verbs (Bouchard 1995).
A further case in point are so-called psycho-collocations (Matisoff1986), which
are also commonly found in our sample, illustrated in (16) from Yucatec Maya.
(16) Yucatec Maya (yua)
a. PLAIN
Le máak-o’ki’imak u y-óol y´
eetel le tsikbal-o’.
DEF person-D2 happy POSS.3 Ø-mind with DEF story-D2
‘The man (lit.: the man’s mind) is happy with the story.’
Directionality in the psych alternation 155
b. INDUCED
Le tsikbal-o’t-u ki’imak-kuns-aj u y-óol le máak-o’.
DEF story-D2PFV-SBJ.3 happy-FACT-CMPL POSS.3 Ø-mind DEF person-D2
‘The story made the man (lit.: the man’s mind) happy.’
In this type of structure, the mental state is expressed with respect to a body part of
which the experiencer is the possessor (Matisoff1986; Verhoeven 2007).
12
Hence,
instead of the experiencer the possessed body part noun alternates between subject
and object function in this type of psych alternation.
The present work focuses on argument alternation patterns in psych expressions
as introduced above. It thus abstracts away from more specific event structural
properties such as stative versusdynamic or agentive versus non-agentive readings of
particular psych lexicalizations in a given language. For example, experiencer-
oriented predicates may be stative (as in example (8) from Khoekhoegowab) or dy-
namic (as in example (9a) from Spanish or example (11a) from German). Similarly,
stimulus-oriented predicates may be stative or dynamic and the stimulus argument
may vary in agentive and causative properties. It has been shown for several lan-
guages that transitive psych verbs are often ambiguous between non-agentive, stative
(ex. 17a) and agentive, dynamic readings (ex. 17b), as exemplified for English from Arad
(1998, ex. 2, 4); see also Landau (2010) and Verhoeven (2010).
(17) a. John’s behavior frightened Nina.
b. Nina frightened Laura deliberately/to make her go away.
While (17b) unambiguously involves causation, cases such as (17a) are sometimes
analyzed as pure states or as caused states (cf. Pylkkänen 2000 for Finnish (fin)
equivalents of (17a) and Rothmayr 2009 for German). In the present work we take a
comprehensive approach and include both agentive and non-agentive/non-causative
stative psych readings. Psych alternations involving the latter types are thus not
instantiations of the causative alternation.
13
12 See also Rott et al. (2020) for an in-depth discussion of the B´
et´
e psych domain, which is excluded
from the present analysis for reasons laid out below, but which heavily features both Irish-style and
Yucatec Maya-style psych expressions.
13 Note that the present work does not consider the psych alternation as a subtype of the causative
alternation despite of taking Nichols et al.’s (2004) approach as main background of the study. The
psych alternation has some overlap with the causative alternation both regarding semantic and
morphological aspects (cf. also Alexiadou and Iordăchioaia 2014). As explained above, on the se-
mantic side the psych alternation may (but need not) involve causation, which is a prerequisite for
the causative alternation. On the morphological side, the psych alternation may (but need not)
involve causative morphology. As will become clear in the remainder of the study, there are
important differences between the psych alternation and the causative alternation including aspects
of argument structure and morphology involved in the alternation.
156 Rott et al.
The discussion has made clear that psych predicates present a special case due to
being characterized by a unique combination of traits such as a strong propensity to
form alternations and the disposition to be highly cross-linguistically heterogeneous
both in terms of semantics and structural rendition (cf. Bouchard 1995; Matisoff
1986). In the remainder of this paper, we therefore seek to take an in-depth look at the
domain across a typologically diverse set of languages in order to investigate
whether the way its features constellate impacts its alternations beyond what could
be expected based on the correlations and tendencies which Nichols et al. (2004)
derive from their broad typology.
3 Sample
3.1 Elicitation method
In the interest of avoiding the problems involved with translation-based data while
working with a highly culturally informed semantic field such as emotion (cf.
Wierzbicka 1986), we developed a method which relies on simple scenarios with
generic human referents and controlled for stimulus animacy. Animacy was
included due to its importance in human cognition and event conceptualization (cf.
Dahl and Fraurud 1996). We considered it by including equal numbers of animate
and inanimate stimuli in the construction of our scenarios in order to outbalance its
effect and capture a broader range of possible lexicalizations for each emotion. Note
that this does not entail a systematic testing of animate and inanimate stimuli across
individual items. The scenarios are constructed around five basic, broadly defined
emotion categories, shown in Table 1. These categories have been shown by psy-
chological research to relate to universal antecedent events, that is abstract junc-
tures in human social plans which most people can be assumed to encounter in their
lifetime (see Boucher and Brandt 1981; Ekman 1994, 1999; Hupka et al. 1999; Johnson-
Laird and Oatley 1989; Turner 2007).
Table :Basic emotion modes and universal antecedent events.
Emotion Universal antecedent event English psych verb examples
HAPPINESS Sub-goals being achieved delight, please, amuse, interest, enjoy
SADNESS Failure of major plan or loss of active goal sadden, mourn, depress, bore
ANGER Active plan obstructed annoy, anger, hate, frustrate
FEAR Self-preservation goal threatened fear, frighten, worry, scare, dread
DISGUST Gustatory goal violated disgust, nauseate, offend, appall
Directionality in the psych alternation 157
Note that these emotion categories are merely used as an elicitation tool and do
not in themselves constitute an independent variable in this study. As we have laid
out in detail in Rott and Verhoeven (2019), the domain of emotion lexis is best
conceived of cross-linguistically as arrays of discrete categories applied in a culture-
specific manner to a spectrum with the coarse focal points laid out in Table 1, which
entails that a given language will group different emotional flavors under one
lexeme or draw up a distinction lacking in another, ‘carving up’its emotion lexicon in
a way that is orthogonal to the questions of the present work.
This setup yielded 5 (emotion category) ×2 (stimulus animacy) = 10 scenarios
such as the ones illustrated in (18), presented orally to informants in a common
language (English, German, Spanish or French):
(18) a. SADNESS, animate stimulus:
A man comes home after a journey and learns that a friend of his has died.
b. FEAR, inanimate stimulus:
A man is lost in the woods at night. He hears a loud noise coming from
behind some nearby trees.
Consultants read the scenarios and were then asked to empathize with the human
characters (representing the experiencer), enabling them to access their native psych
lexicon without relying on predefined translational cues (see Rott and Verhoeven 2019 for
a detailed account). In order to facilitate lexical retrieval, we then asked a number of
questions intended to highlight different parametric aspects of the target emotion (tem-
poral structure regarding relative position of stimulus in the time model and latency
between stimulus and emotion, degree of emotion, social appraisal) and one additional
generalized question for pertinent items not fitting any specificquestion(cf.Johnson-
Laird and Oatley 1989; Rott and Verhoeven 2019). For an initial set of seven languages
(Spanish, Icelandic, Korean, Chinese, Finnish,Hungarian,Romanian),RottandVerho-
even’s(2019)long form protocol was used, where each scenario was supplemented with 10
questions yielding 100 questions per language. For the majority of languages, the medium
form protocol of 40 questions was used, which was limited to those questions which
averaged the largest number of responses across the initial set of long form elicitations.
Illustrative examples of the medium form questions for the scenario (18b) are given in (19).
(19) a. Stimulus occurs in the present:
Which words could be used to describe the thoughts and feelings the man
has when he hears the noise?
b. Emotion has short latency:
Which words could be used to express how the sudden noise makes the
man feel?
158 Rott et al.
c. Emotion is of high intensity:
Which words can best describe how the man feels when he sees that the
noise was caused by a large dangerous animal?
d. Other:
Which other words might be used to describe how the man feels when he
hears the noise?
Due to time constraints in the field, the short form protocol, containing only one
question per scenario, was used for two languages (B´
et´
e [bet], Cab´
ecar [cjp]).
Speakers were asked to provide 1–3 lexical items per question, but were allowed to
skip a question if it didn’t trigger any items after some reflection. Upon producing a
target item, participants were instructed to first use it in a simple declarative sen-
tence, ideally accommodating both the experiencer and the stimulus argument
14
from the scenario. They were then asked to reframe this sentence and shift the focus
on the respective non-subject argument (i.e., to create a psych-alternating pair). This
was usually done in an open-ended trial-and-error fashion at the beginning of the
sessions so as to not prime participants in favor of a certain structure; reoccurring
structures were then gradually favored and over time, the elicitation would become
more systematic as participants became aware of the types of alternations we were
looking for. Once enough data was gathered to allow predictions, the researchers
worked with the consultants in order to obtain both positive and negative evidence
regarding the alternating structures. Furthermore, information about distributive
restrictions (e.g. stimulus animacy, register) as well as transparent interlexical
relations were recorded.
15
Items were frequently elicited in multiple scenarios in
language-specific combinations, corroborating at least in part the original motiva-
tion of foregoing translational cues.
14 The elicitation process was open to the lexicalization of individual or propositional stimulus
arguments. This is transparent in the Supplementary Materials where the elicited sentences for each
lexical item are given on datasheet “examples”. For instance, for the scenario SADNESS, inanimate
stimulus: A girl loses her favorite toy and is unable to find it again, consultants often chose different
types of nominalizations in order to encode the abstract/propositional stimulus, e.g. “The loss of the
toy depressed/saddened/ …the girl”in Hebrew, Basque, Mapudungun, Finnish, Icelandic, Romanian,
etc.; “The thought of the lost toy …”in Korean, Romanian); “Losing the toy …”in Khoekhoegowab or a
modified individual argument (e.g. “The lost toy made the girl sad/depressed/etc.”in South Efate,
Finnish, Irish, Korean, etc.). The same also holds for other scenarios with inanimate stimuli (to
different degrees). Importantly, in the elicitation, different lexicalizations were tried out in order to
elicit the alternating pairs.
15 For some languages this procedure resulted in additional psych alternating items going beyond
the 10 elicitation scenarios. Furthermore, in those cases where the scenario-based elicitation was less
rich than expected we complemented it by material found in the literature.
Directionality in the psych alternation 159
3.2 Sample structure
Our sample consists of 26 languages (25 with faithful pairs, see below), covering five
macro-areas (Africa, America, Asia, Europe, Oceania) and belonging to 15 language
families (see Figure 1 and Table 2). Due to the availability of consultants from Indo-
European languages and languages belonging to the European macro-area the
sample is biased towards these groups.
Elicited pairs were counted in a binary fashion, i.e., as tuples of two forms
fulfilling the following criteria: (i) they instantiate a systematic morphosyntactic
alternation between semantically equivalent experiencer-oriented and stimulus-
oriented counterparts, (ii) at least one form exhibits a pattern which aligns
morphosyntactically with canonical transitives, (iii) the experiencer and the
stimulus have argument status in both alternants (see Rott et al. 2020 for further
discussion); (iv) in complex psych constructions, the syntactic role of the expe-
riencer in (i) and (iii) is taken by the mental state or a body part. Pairs which met
these criteria are labeled ‘faithful’. An overview of the resulting dataset is given
in Table 2.
In order to ensure structural equality, only faithful pairs were considered in
the statistical analyses presented in the following section. A consequence of this is
that B´
et´
e is excluded altogether from this part of the discussion due to the
consistent unavailability of a recoverable stimulus in experiencer-oriented
alternants, a violation of criterion (iii) (however see Rott et al. 2020 for a
detailed discussion of the B´
et´
e data). Nonetheless, pertinent data from all lan-
guages will be invoked in the discussion of certain patterns. The entirety of the
sample with the pertinent information described in Section 3.1 is provided in the
Supplementary Materials.
Figure 1: Language families of the sample languages.
160 Rott et al.
Subsample sizes vary across languages. While this is in part due to the nature of
the elicitation task, there is no direct correlation between the elicitation protocol used
(see Section 3.1) and the net number of items per language. Rather, we suspect that
other factors may be at play here. Consider for example the cases of Spanish and
Icelandic, two languages for which the long form protocol was used: The former
resulted in 119 items, while the latter yielded 29. Spanish has a nearly fully gramma-
ticalized alternation of dative and accusative object experiencers which surfaces in
preverbal clitic markers (Fábregas et al. 2017; Vázquez Rozas 2006), shown in (20). The
dative forms correlate with a non-eventive interpretation of the predicate. Although
the dative-licensing variants of these verbs can be considered to be external to the
psych alternation, they are inherently connected with it via their availability as reg-
ular, semantically motivated alternants to eventive predicates with accusative object
Table :Overall sample structure.
Language ISO-code Macro-area Family Faithful pairs
Amharic amh Africa Afro-Asiatic
B
et
e bet Africa Niger-Congo
Khoekhoegowab naq Africa Khoe-Kwadi
Cab
ecar cjp America Chibchan
Mapudungun arn America Araucanian
Yucatec Maya yua America Mayan
Georgian kat Asia Kartvelian
Hebrew heb Asia Afro-Asiatic
Hindi hin Asia Indo-European
Korean kor Asia Korean
Mandarin Chinese zho Asia Sino-Tibetan
Marathi mar Asia Indo-European
Persian fas Asia Indo-European
Tamil tam Asia Dravidian
Basque eus Europe Basque
Finnish fin Europe Uralic
German deu Europe Indo-European
Hungarian hun Europe Uralic
Icelandic isl Europe Indo-European
Irish gle Europe Indo-European
Romanian ron Europe Indo-European
Serbian srp Europe Indo-European
Spanish spa Europe Indo-European
Turkish tur Europe Altaic
Malagasy mlg Oceania Austronesian
South Efate (Nafsan) erk Oceania Austronesian
Total ,
Directionality in the psych alternation 161
experiencers. Thus, eventivity as a factor is orthogonal to the availability of the psych
alternation in Spanish, allowing many dative experiencers to participate.
(20) a. PLAIN
El hombre se conmocion-a (con la noticia).
the man REFL shock-3.SG (with the news)
‘The man is/gets shocked (by the news).’
b. INDUCED (eventive)
La noticia (lo) conmocion-a al hombre.
the news (CL.ACC) shock-3.SG to.the man
‘The news shocks the man.’
c. INDUCED (non-eventive)
Al hombre *(le) conmocion-a la noticia.
to.the man CL.DAT shock-3.SG the news
‘The news shocks the man.’
Icelandic also encodes experiencers as datives and accusatives (cf. Jónsson 1997–
1998). However, while there are some coarse semantic predictors (cf. Barðdal 2001),
case assignment in Icelandic is much more idiosyncratic than in Spanish. Alterna-
tions between the dative and another case (accusatives or nominatives) do exist in
Icelandic as well, but the distribution is lexical and driven by entirely different
factors. Broadly speaking, animate sentient entities tend to be marked with the dative
to elicit an experiential or beneficiary reading, while undergoers are marked with a
nominative or an accusative depending on the syntactic role (Barðdal 1993; Maling
2002: 63–65). This is illustrated by the examples in (21) and (22).
(21) a. Dative
Ann-a klóra-ði Jón-i.
Anna-NOM scratch-PST John-DAT
‘Anna scratched John.’(implies pleasure, i.e., to help with an itch)
b. Accusative
Ann-a klóra-ði Jón.
Anna-NOM scratch-PST John:ACC
‘Anna scratched John.’(implies injury)
(22) a. Dative
Sjúkling-num batna-ði.
patient:DAT-DEF get.better-PST
‘The patient got better.’
b. Nominative
Veðr-ið batna-ði.
weather:NOM-DEF get.better-PST
‘The weather got better.’
162 Rott et al.
Thus, the Icelandic case alternations have a much deeper and less predictable
semantic impact than their Spanish counterpart. By virtue of the correlation of
thedativewiththeexperiential reading, predicates that may have otherwise fit
the criteria laid out in Section 3.1 are thus removed from the pool of potential
psych verbs showing a transitivity alternation, thereby reducing the sample size.
Additionally, Icelandic has an extensive set of dative-coding experiential verbs in
which the experiencer argument evinces subject properties (cf. e.g. Jónsson 1997–
1998; Sigurðsson 2004). The majority of these verbs shows no case variation in the
marking of the experiencer, nor any kind of PLAIN ∼INDUCED morphosyntactic
alternation. In the spoken language, there is even a tendency for these dative
experiencers to encroach upon accusative (and some nominative) experiencers,
but this is a frequency-based process of largely unidirectional analogical leveling
(Jónsson and Eyþórsson 2003; Svavarsdóttir 1982) rather than a regular, gram-
maticalized alternation. Icelandic hence shows a pronounced tendency to use
strategies other than the morphosyntactic patterns of canonical transitives with
an accusative object to express psych meanings. Thus, there are endemic reasons
to the difference in sample size between even relatively closely related languages
such as Spanish and Icelandic.
Subsample sizes are additionally impacted by the idiolect of the consultants.
Even though the elicitation protocols were applied with consistent instructions and
time frames, it is possible that individual speakers found the task easier than
others, or that their emotional lexicon was either individually or linguistically
more fine-grained. In fact, several consultants reported anecdotally that they felt
this specific domain of their language to be smaller than in other languages they
were familiar with. For example, the Turkish subsample contains more than seven
times as many items as the Amharic subsample, even though both were elicited
using the medium form protocol. We have accommodated the grammatical, lexical
and individual variability between languages by integrating language as a random
factor in our statistical analyses.
4 Results and discussion
4.1 Alternation types in the sample
While the choice of derivation is not categorical (something which isn’t to be ex-
pected for alternations in any lexical domain, cf. Nichols et al. 2004: 151f.), the results
show that the overwhelming part of the languages show a general preference for one
of these properties (Figure 2). We can identify four distinct groups: Irish (gle), He-
brew (heb), Basque (eus), Persian (fas), and Hindi (hin) have only or predominantly
Directionality in the psych alternation 163
undirected pairs in the examined inventory and thus are classified as having an
underspecified psych domain. In Mandarin Chinese (zho), Nafsan (erk), Korean (kor),
Tamil (tam), Khoekhoegowab (naq), Malagasy (mlg), and Mapudungun (arn), the only
or dominant pattern which holds across pairs is augmentation, which means that
their psych domain is transitivizing. The dominant pattern for Spanish (spa),
Romanian (ron), Serbian (srp), German (deu), and Icelandic (isl) is reduction, leading
to a classification as detransitivizing. The last group, which does not neatly fit the
typology we derived from the triad of morphological correspondences in (7), is made
up of Hungarian (hun), Marathi (mar), Cab´
ecar (cjp), Georgian (kat), Yucatec Maya
(yua), Amharic (amh), Turkish (tur), and Finnish (fin). These languages show a more
mixed picture, combining two (Marathi, Georgian, Yucatec Maya, Amharic) or all
three alternation strategies (Hungarian, Cab´
ecar, Turkish, Finnish) in a more equal
manner. Most languages of this latter group however still display preferences of a
given strategy, showing either a predominance of augmentation (>65%, i.e. Turkish,
Amharic, Yucatec Maya) or a predominance of undirected pairs (>60%, i.e. Hun-
garian, Marathi, Cab´
ecar).
Figure 2 reveals that the choice of pattern in individual languages is not normally
distributed. Individual languages show preferences for certain patterns that are then
pervasive in a part of their inventory, while the alternative patterns are marginally
represented. This finding is more clearly visible in the density graphs in Figure 3.
These present the density of languages in the percentage scale of each strategy. This
data reveals a bimodal distribution in all strategies, containing two central values: a
group of languages close to 0% (languages in which the corresponding strategy is
marginally represented in the inventory of psych predicates), a group of languages
close to 100% (languages in which the corresponding strategy is strongly represented
Figure 2: Directionality of alternation in the languages of the sample.
164 Rott et al.
in the inventory of psych verbs). The bimodality of these distributions was tested by
the ‘dip test’(Hartigan and Hartigan 1985; package diptest in R, Maechler 2016), which
reveals that all three distributions are strongly (but not significantly) bimodal (this
applies to values of the diptest statistic between 0.05 and 0.1): augmented: 0.07,
reduced: 0.08, undirected: 0.07.
While we did not test systematically for the impact of stimulus animacy across
individual items, it is worth noting that due to the detailed structure of our elicitation
task,wewereabletorecordsomeanimacyeffects nonetheless. Stimulus animacy largely
plays out as lexically determined combinatory restrictions, i.e. certain languages will
allowcertainverbstoeitheronlyornevertake inanimate stimuli, the former being the
more common case. In PLAIN, i.e. experiencer-oriented alternants, the means of stimulus
inclusion may vary based on stimulus animacy, e.g. by using different adpositional or
case marking for animate entities. In other cases, animacy impacts the availability of a
psych reading when there is a synchronically transparent metaphorical extension of an
action verb. In such cases, an animate stimulus will tend to force the non-psych reading,
although this can be mitigated by context (cf. Klein and Kutscher 2002). The strongest
effect is found in Finnish, where only inanimate stimuli allow syntactic fronting of the
oblique experiencer, creating constructions with non-canonical word order and some
subject-like properties in the oblique experiencer (Siiroinen 2005). The contrast is
illustrated in (23) versus (24) from our data (see also Rott et al. 2020).
(23) Intended meaning: ‘The man’s behavior irritates the woman.’(Inanimate
stimulus)
a. Canonical word order
Mieh-en käytos kiukutta-a nais-ta.
man-GEN behavior:NOM irritate-3.SG woman-PTV
b. Non-canonical word order (‘experiencer construction’, Siiroinen 2005)
Nais-ta kiukutta-a mieh-en käytös.
woman-PTV irritate-3.SG man-GEN behavior:NOM
Figure 3: Density of languages depending on the percentage of each strategy in their psych verb inventory.
Directionality in the psych alternation 165
(24) Intended meaning: ‘The man irritates the woman.’(Animate stimulus)
a. Canonical word order
Mies kiukutta-a nais-ta.
man:NOM irritate-3.SG woman-PTV
‘The man irritates the woman.’
b. Non-canonical word order (ungrammatical)
*Nais-ta kiukutta-a mies.
woman-PTV irritate-3.SG man:NOM
4.2 Psych patterns
4.2.1 Areality and the structure of psych constructions
Figure 4 depicts the geographic distribution of the sample languages according to their
preferred alternation type in the psych domain. As Figures 2 and 3 show, the most
homogeneous group is made up of the detransitivizing languages, all of which occur in
the European macro-area and belong to the Indo-European phylum (cf. Figure 4). Note
however that the European macro-area is not exclusively detransitivizing (Basque,
Finnish, Hungarian, Irish, Turkish) and neither is the Indo-European phylum (Irish,
Persian, Marathi, Hindi). There appears to be an exceptional cluster within Indo-
European languages whose geographic center is the European mainland (cf. Cysouw
2011). In contrast, neither the transitivizing set nor the underspecified one can be related
Figure 4: Areal distribution of alternation directionality type in the languages of the sample.16
16 The languages identified as ‘mixed’are additionally subclassified according to their dominant
strategy.
166 Rott et al.
to any specific macro-area (transitivizing set: four out of five macro-areas, i.e., Asia,
Africa, Oceania, America; underspecifiedset:twomacro-areas,i.e.,Asia,Europe).Ifthe
mixed-transitivizing and mixed-underspecified languages are included, both types occur
in five resp. four macro-areas. This typological dichotomy was also observed by Nichols
et al. (2004) for their general set of verbs. Thus, the psych domain of the detransitivizing
set recruits the same structural means as non-psych verbs. Our results lend further
support to their observation that the presence of reduction in animate verbs (recall that
our entire dataset consists of verbs belonging to Nichols et al.’s 2004 animate verbs) is
negatively correlated with the availability of a causative operation. The scarcity of
augmented and undirected pairs in the detransitivizing set thus plausibly falls out from
this assumption, since both typically involve a causative derivation.
Strikingly, all four ‘outlier’languages of the Indo-European phylum present with
underspecified psych inventories instead. As the illustrative examples in (15) from
Irish and (25)–(26) from Persian and Marathi show, the specific mechanism every-
where is auxiliary/light verb change.
(25) Persian
a. PLAIN
.ﺁﻥﻣﺮﺩﺍﺯﮐﺮﻣﻬﺎﻣﺮﯾﺾﺷﺪ
An mard (az kerm-ha) mariz=shod
DEF man (with maggot-PL) sickened=get.PST
‘The man gets disgusted (by the maggots).’
b. INDUCED
.ﮐﺮﻣﻬﺎﻣﺮﺩﺭﺍﻣﺮﯾﺾﮐﺮﺩﻧﺪ
Kerm-ha an mard ra mariz=kard.
maggot-PL DEF man ACC sickened=make.PST
‘The maggots disgust the man.’
(26) Marathi
a. PLAIN
T-yāmāṇs-ā-lākiḍ-yā-ñ-c-īkiḷas ā-l-ī.
DEM-OBL man-OBL-DAT maggot-OBL-PL-GEN-Fdisgust come-PST-F
‘The man got disgusted with the maggots.’
b. INDUCED
Kiḍ-yā-n-nīt-yāmāṇs-ā-lākiḷas āṇ-l-ī.
maggot-OBL-PL-ERG DEM-OBL man-OBL-DAT disgust bring-PST-F
‘The maggots disgusted the man.’
The periphrastic structure found in Persian is common and productive outside the
psych domain as well (cf. Megerdoomian 2001). While Irish and Marathi also make
pervasive use of light verb constructions elsewhere (Bloch-Trojnar 2010; Dhongde and
Directionality in the psych alternation 167
Wali 2009), the expression of psych meanings is at least one highly salient function of a
small number of domains the specific structures attested in our dataset appear in (cf.
Adger and Ramchand 2006). The same holds for the other type of complex psych
constructions, the so-called psycho-collocations (Matisoff1986), introduced in Section 2,
which are commonly foundin Yucatec Maya (16) and South Efate (27)from our sample.
(27) South Efate/Nafsan
a. PLAIN
Naturiai nen nmarten i=kokon ki=palun.
man DEM guts 3.SG=be.bitter at=brother.
‘The boy (lit. the boy’s guts) is enraged at the brother.’
b. INDUCED
Palun i=preg nmarten i=kokon.
brother 3.SG=make guts 3.SG=bitter
‘The brother enraged him (lit.: the guts).’
In our sample, languages with a (larger) proportion of complex psych constructions, i.e.
constructions where either the mental state or a body part are coded as nominal con-
stituents which alternate between subject and object function (see Section 2), are found
in all five macro-areas (see Figure 5), which attests to the general psych-specificnatureof
these structures, rather than being an areal trait.
Figure 5: Areal distribution of complex psych constructions in the languages of the sample.17
17 The scale from blue to red indicates the proportion of complex psych constructions in the elicited
verb sets of the sample languages.
168 Rott et al.
The overall morphological means used to effect the alternation are varied, but
reveal some areal patterns. The strongest observation is the universal and global
dominance of causative morphology in augmented pairs, which occurs in all macro-
areas and conforms to Nichols et al. (2004). In the Americas, the INDUCED (stimulus-
oriented) alternant can take a factitive marker instead.
18
Light verbs of various
pertinent lexical origins also occur in four out of five macro-areas. The uppercase
forms shown in Table 3 represent cross-linguistic translations. Where structures
have been illustrated in examples in this work, references are given.
Reduced pairs most commonly occur in the European macro-area. As Table 4
shows, all morphological means which the languages in our sample use to derive the
PLAIN (experiencer-oriented) alternant are found here, with the exception of light
verbs. The most common means are reflexivization and participial constructions.
Undirected pairs are the most varied group. While languages tend to generalize
the use of only a few pairings of morphological means, almost all show some variability
in individual items, i.e. most languages have a few lexically specified ‘outlier’pairs
whose combination of morphological means is not (or no longer) productive. The
Table :Morphological means in augmented pairs.
Morphology Languages Macro-areas Examples from text
CAUS Africa, America, Asia,
Europe, Oceania
(), (), (), (), (), (),
(), (), ()
Light verb (DO, MAKE, LET,
BRING, FILL)
America, Asia, Europe,
Oceania
FACT America ()
Table :Morphological means in reduced pairs.
Morphology Languages Macroareas Examples from text
REFL Europe (), (), ()
PTCP Europe (), ()
INCH Europe (), ()
MID America, Europe ()
PASS Asia, Europe
Light verb (GET/RECEIVE, SUFFER) Asia
18 Note that factitive morphology also occurs in other languages such as Finnish in our sample, but
there it is involved in word formation and does not contribute directly to the alternation (see Section
4.2.4).
Directionality in the psych alternation 169
overview therefore only includes tuples thatoccur at least twice, either across multiple
languages or within one language. For example, Icelandic evinces a few unique
combinations of morphologically derived PLAIN forms and complex INDUCED forms with
lexically specified verb-noun combinations (e.g. reiða-st anger-MID ‘get angry’∼reita til
reiði enrage to anger ‘anger’). Tuples in Table 5 are given in the order PLAIN ∼INDUCED.
Light verb constructions are the most common means for undirected pairs. Since our
sample shows a large amount of variation in the possible combinations of light verbs,
only the six most common means are shown for illustrative purposes. The second most
frequent type is made up of pairs with no formal differentiation between the alter-
nants. Combinations of morphological means heavily rely on the causative (or again,
the factitive in the Americas) for the INDUCED alternant, but show quite a bit of variation
in the formation of the PLAIN alternant. Interestingly, while the morphology of the
INDUCED alternant aligns neatly with purely augmented pairs (see Table 3), the most
common means for reduced pairs (reflexives and participial constructions) almost
never occur in undirected pairs in our sample, to the exception of a few items in
Mapudungun where a factitive was found to alternate with a reflexivizer. We will
return to this observation in Section 4.2.3.
4.2.2 Morphological alignment
Following the procedure in Nichols et al. (2004), we distinguish between the two
major alignment types accusative and ergative, taking into account morphological
case alignment in nouns and pronouns following Comrie (2013) and alignment in
Table :Morphological means in undirected pairs.
Morphology Languages Macroareas Examples from text
Light verbs (GET ∼MAKE; BE ∼PUT; BE ∼DO;
BE ∼HAVE; COME ∼BRING; COME ∼PUT, …)
Europe, Asia (), (), (), (),
(), (), (), ()
PASS ∼CAUS Africa, Asia,
Oceania
()
INCH ∼CAUS Asia, Europe (), ()
base ∼base Africa, Asia,
Europe
(), (), ()
ADJ ∼CAUS Africa, Asia
MID ∼CAUS America (), ()
STAT ∼FACT America
STAT ∼CAUS America ()
FIENT ∼FACT America ()
REFL ∼FACT America
MID ∼Light verb Europe
170 Rott et al.
verbal agreement following Siewierska (2013), as depicted in Table 6.
19
In accordance
with Nichols et al. (2004: 167f) those languages where accusative alignment is
dominant, i.e. either present in at least two of the three categories or the only non-
neutral value in Table 6, are classified as accusative. We also follow Nichols et al.
(2004: 168) in defining ergative “not as dominant alignment but as salient presence of
morphological ergativity”in at least one of the three categories in Table 6, which
Table :Alignment in sample.
Language Case marking of
full noun phrases
Case marking
of pronouns
Verbal person marking Type assigned
Amharic NOM-ACC NOM-ACC Accusative Accusative
B
et
e Neutral NOM-ACC Neutral Accusative
Khoekhoegowab NOM-ACC NOM-ACC Accusative Accusative
Cab
ecar ERG-ABS ERG-ABS Neutral Ergative
Mapudungun Neutral Neutral Hierarchical Neutral
Yucatec Maya Neutral Neutral Split Ergative traits
Georgian Active-inactive Neutral Accusative Ergative traits
Hebrew NOM-ACC NOM-ACC Accusative Accusative
Hindi Tripartite Tripartite Split Ergative traits
Korean NOM-ACC NOM-ACC Neutral Accusative
Mandarin Chinese Neutral Neutral Neutral Neutral
Marathi Tripartite NOM-ACC Split Ergative traits
Persian NOM-ACC NOM-ACC Accusative Accusative
Tamil NOM-ACC NOM-ACC Accusative Accusative
BasqueaERG-ABS ERG-ABS Ergative Ergative
Finnish NOM-ACC NOM-ACC Accusative Accusative
German NOM-ACC NOM-ACC Accusative Accusative
Hungarian NOM-ACC NOM-ACC Accusative Accusative
Icelandic NOM-ACC NOM-ACC Accusative Accusative
Irish Neutral NOM-ACC Accusative Accusative
Romanian NOM-ACC NOM-ACC Accusative Accusative
Serbian NOM-ACC NOM-ACC Accusative Accusative
Spanish NOM-ACC NOM-ACC Accusative Accusative
Turkish NOM-ACC NOM-ACC Accusative Accusative
Malagasy NOM-ACC NOM-ACC Neutral Accusative
South Efate (Nafsan) Neutral Neutral Accusative Accusative
aBasque shows dialectal variation between a semantically based (active-inactive) c ase marking system (Western dialect)
and an ergative case marking system (Eastern and Central dialects), cf. Aldai (). Since our consultant is a speaker of
the Central dialect we assign here ergative case marking.
19 If a language wasn’t part of the respective WALS-samples, we followed pertinent literature on the
languages.
Directionality in the psych alternation 171
identifies Cab´
ecar and Basque as ergative languages. Some sample languages
(Yucatec Maya, Georgian, Hindi, Marathi) possess complex alignment systems
including split verbal person marking and/or tripartite or active-inactive case
marking. None of these languages fits the above definition of accusative alignment.
Since all of them do possess ergative morphology in at least one of the three cate-
gories in Table 6 they are identified as possessing ergative traits.
Nichols et al. (2004) report a number of (significant) correlations between the
directionality types in (7) and morphological alignment, which are supported by
our data. All detransitivizing languages of our sample (Spanish, Romanian, Serbian,
German, and Icelandic) are accusative languages instantiating Nichols et al.’s (2004:
168) observation that the reduced type favors accusativity. Furthermore, the
directed types in (7), i.e., augmentation and reduction, favor accusative alignment,
which is also descriptively visible in our sample: the predominantly transitivizing
languages Nafsan, Korean, Tamil, Khoekhoegowab and Malagasy are accusative
languages. Finally, our sample seems to support the correlation between the un-
directed type in (7), which includes ‘neutral’and ‘indeterminate’alternations, as
explained in Section 2, and ergative alignment. All languages classified as ergative
or possessing ergative traits in Table 6 have either predominantly undirected pairs
(Basque, Hindi) or belong to the more mixed type but with a substantial amount of
undirected pairs (Georgian, Cab´
ecar, Marathi, Yucatec Maya), see Figure 2, Figure 4.
Themorespecific alternations present in these languages include auxiliary change
(Basque, Hindi, Marathi) and double derivation (Georgian, Cab´
ecar, Yucatec
Maya
20
).
In order to inspect the impact of alignment on the choice of alternation strategy
in more detail, we contrast languages without ergative traits (i.e. the languages
identified as accusative and neutral in Table 6) with languages with ergative traits
(i.e. the languages labeled as ergative or displaying ergative traits in Table 6). Figure 6
presents the averaged proportions of each strategy in these two language groups.
Since these averages relate to the proportions, the differences between languages in
the number of examined verbs are outbalanced. Figure 6 shows that in languages
without ergative traits, all strategies are frequently represented, with an advantage
for the augmented strategy (augmented: 44.6%; reduced: 29.6%; undirected: 25.7%).
Languages with ergative traits crucially differ: the undirected strategy is the
preferred option (68.2%), the reduced strategy is marginally represented (2.2%; only
three instances in the Cab´
ecar data), while the augmented strategy still occurs often
(29.6%).
20 The dominant alternation strategy in Yucatec Maya is augmentation, however there is also a
considerable number of undirected pairs instantiating double derivation, see Figure 2.
172 Rott et al.
In order to test the statistical significance of these differences we fitted
generalized linear mixed-effects models on the data. In order to get informative
results about the threefold distinction between augmented, reduced and undi-
rected strategies, we analyzed the data in two steps. In a first analysis, we examined
whether ALIGNMENT (languages with vs. without ergative traits) has an impact on the
choice of directed (augmented/reduced) or undirected strategies (dependent var-
iable). The statistical model contains the fixed effect of ALIGNMENT (languages
without ergative traits as a baseline; languages with ergative traits as level of
interest). The individual LANGUAGES were added to the model as a random variable,
which means that the statistical model examines whether the effect of alignment
type holds true beyond the variation that is due to the different languages (see SM 2,
Section 5.3). This analysis (see Table 7) shows a negative effect of ALIGNMENT (−3.58),
which means that the directed strategies (augmented/reduced) occur less often in
languages with ergative traits (see the increase of ‘undirected’in languages with
ergative traits in Figure 6). A log-likelihood test was performed testing whether a
model without the fixed factor ALIGNMENT has a significant impact on the model fit.
The result of this test is significant (p-value below 0.05 in Table 7), which means that
ALIGNMENT has a significant effect on the choice between ‘directed’and ‘undirected’
in our data.
Figure 6: Directionality of alternation
type per alignment type.
Directionality in the psych alternation 173
In a second analysis, we examined the choice of direction, i.e. the choice between
augmented or reduced strategies in case that a direction is selected (i.e., excluding
‘undirected’). A generalized mixed-effects model with the same parameters as above
was fitted to the data. The dependent variable is the choice of augmented (baseline)
or reduced (level of interest), the role of ALIGNMENT is a fixed factor, and the role of
LANGUAGES is treated as a random factor. The result in Table 8 shows that ALIGNMENT has
a negative impact on this choice (−5.89), which corresponds to the decrease of in-
stances of the reduced strategy in languages with ergative traits. The log-likelihood
test is again significant (p-value below 0.05 in Table 8), confirming that ALIGNMENT has
a significant effect on the occurrence of reduced pairs, such that they significantly
decrease in languages with ergative traits.
The above data show that the augmented pairs occur frequently both in lan-
guages with and in languages without ergative traits. Augmentation seems to be the
most natural alternation given the functional makeup of the experiential domain in
terms of the prominence of the experiencer and the stativity of the situation.
Assuming that a psych situation primarily renders a state of the experiencer directed
towards a stimulus, as delineated in Section 1, the experiencer-oriented lexicaliza-
tion, as present in the intransitive ES predicates seems to be the structurally most
direct way of encoding the PLAIN alternant
21
with the INDUCED alternant to be formally
(more) marked. This is supported in Nichols et al. (2004: 172f) with respect to their
Table :Mixed-effects model: impact of alignment on the frequency of directed versus undirected pairs.
Coefficients Estimate SE Log-likelihood test
χp(<)
INTERCEPT . .
ALIGNMENT −. . . .
Table :Mixed-effects model: impact of alignment on the choice between augmented and reduced pairs.
Coefficients Estimate SE Log-likelihood test
χp(<)
INTERCEPT −. .
ALIGNMENT −. . . .
21 Corresponding to what is called an “optimal elementary lexicalization”in Nichols et al. (2004: 183).
174 Rott et al.
‘animate verbs’, which cross-linguistically favor the basic lexicalization of the PLAIN
alternant, while the INDUCED alternant tends to be derived.
The results in Table 8 indicate that reduction is significantly less frequent in
languages with ergative traits compared to languages without ergative traits.
Disfavoring reduced alternation pairs is also in line with the prerequisites of
ergative alignment, at least in those cases where the ergative is associated with
causer/agenthood (Legate 2012; Woolford 1997). In a reduced alternation pair the
transitive verb is the basic lexical form, which does not seem to (optimally) fit
the prerequisites of a psych situation. Such a coding does not only run against the
abovementioned universal lexicalization preference for ‘animate’verbs to form
augmented pairs but would also equip the stimulus with causer/agent properties
in the basic lexicalization. We know from detransitivizing languages (e.g. Spanish,
Romanian, Serbian, German, Icelandic from our sample) that the (basic) transitive
structures show non-canonical psych-specific semantic properties, among them
stativity and non-agentivity (e.g. Belletti and Rizzi 1988; Dowty 1991; Landau 2010;
Pesetsky 1995; Verhoeven 2015 among many others). The latter would not be in line
with the thematic properties of an ergative argument.
Finally, the significant association of languages with ergative traits with the
undirected alternation type, as significantly confirmed in Table 7, seems to come as a
surprise, at least at first sight. Ergative alignment is expected to naturally go hand in
hand with augmentation under the assumption that the observed alternation is a
kind of actor-adding alternation, which is indeed the case, as explained before (see
again Nichols et al.’s 2004 assumptions on their ‘animate verbs’). In this case a basic
intransitive encoding and a marked transitive encoding would not only be visible on
the verb but additionally by adding an ergative argument, while the absolutive
argument remains constant across the alternation. Most languages with ergative
traits in our sample (i.e. Yucatec Maya, Cab´
ecar, Georgian, Hindi, Marathi; see
Figure 2) indeed display augmented pairs to some extent, Basque being the only
exclusively underspecified language (as mentioned above, the average of augmented
pairs is 29.6% for the languages with ergative traits of our sample).
Nichols et al. (2004: 169) speculate about the association of ergative alignment with
the undirected alternation type
22
by referring to the ‘obsolete’hypothesis that basically
or originally the ergative structure is intransitive, adding the ergative as an adjunct. They
argue that the ‘indeterminate’mechanisms, as present in ambitransitive pairs (cf. the
English example in (6) and the Chinese example in (13)) and pairs whose alternants are
only distinguished by conjugation class (cf. the Hebrew pair in (14)) would be in line with
such a conceptualization in so far as both alternants, the intransitive AND the transitive
22 Remember that this type is composed of ‘neutral’and ‘indeterminate’alternation mechanisms
(see Section 2 for the specific mechanisms subsumed under these categories).
Directionality in the psych alternation 175
ones are morphologically unmarked. However, given that the ergative languages of our
sample all belong to the ‘neutral’type –they are either double deriving or show
auxiliary/light verb change –this explanation is not applicable. In case of auxiliary/light
verb change (see example (12) from Basque, example (26) from Marathi and example (28)
from Hindi) there is indeed a common form used in both alternants. However, this is
most often a nominal/nominalized form, either an adjective/participle or a noun, while
the transitivity alternation is due to the auxiliaries or light verbs, which are intransitive
or transitive, respectively (cf. Creissels and Mounole 2019).
(28) Hindi
a. PLAIN
Vah aurat apn-īgāṛīsēparēśān h-u-ī.
that woman REFL-Fvehicle ABL irritated become-PST-F
‘That woman got irritated because of her car.’
b. INDUCED
Us-k-īgāṛīnēus aurat kōparēśān ki-y-ā.
that.OBL-GEN-Fvehicle ERG that.OBL woman DAT irritated do-PST-M
‘Her car irritated that woman.’
Further, the languages which evince double derivation (Cab´
ecar, Georgian, Yucatec
Maya) do not conform with the aforementioned explanation since they display
overtmorphologybothinthetransitiveandtheintransitiveform,see(30b–c) for
Georgian, (31) for Yucatec Maya, and (42a–b) for Cab´
ecar. Similar to the afore-
mentioned cases of auxiliary/light verb change, Georgian and Yucatec Maya mostly
take nominal (adjectival or noun) roots as bases in their double deriving pairs,
adding suffixes, i.e. causatives/factitives or inchoatives/passives, which are at the
same time verbalizers. Corresponding cases are also present in Cab´
ecar, as
exemplified in (42a–b), where a causative and a middle form are derived from the
adjective dokó ‘ugly’resulting in the transitive EO verb dokówa
‘disgust’and the
intransitive ES verb dokóna
‘get disgusted’. Most undirected pairs however belong
to the most pervasive verb class in Cab´
ecar, i.e. verbs formed from equipollent
roots, which require the causative and the middle suffixes in order to be inflected as
transitive and intransitive verbs, respectively (González Campos and Lehmann
2018, Sect. 10.2.2.4; González Campos and Obando Martínez 2018), as illustrated
in (29). In the psych domain (as in general) these roots seem to be mostly
non-productive but may historically relate to productively used nominal roots
(González Campos and Obando Martínez 2018).
176 Rott et al.
(29) Cab´
ecar
a. PLAIN
Aláklä suá-n-á
jakbälä yíka.
woman fear-MID-PFV thief AVERS
‘The woman was afraid of the thief.’
b. INDUCED
Aláklä suá-w-á
jakbälä te.
woman fear-CAUS-PFV theft ERG
‘The thief scared the woman.’
Overall, these cases do not fit the assumption of a basic intransitive type, which is
also used for the transitive type (via ambitransitivity). Hence, this explanation is
not valid for the significant association of languages with ergative traits with the
undirected alternation type in the psych domain. The detailed inspection of the
data rather points to the dominant role of the nominal origin of psych concepts in
undirected alternation pairs (here: the neutral type, see Section 2), which is how-
ever not specific to ergative languages. The positive correlation of languages with
ergative traits and undirected alternation could thus be epiphenomenal to the
nominal makeup of the psych domain.
4.2.3 Pattern heterogeneity and the problem of dyadic alternations
One of the major ways in which psych verbs in our sample deviate from the expected
patterns is via a stronger admixture of strategies in a number of languages. A closer
look at the data reveals that one of the reasons for this is that some languages actually
create a triad of forms rather than a binary, opposing a stative, an inchoative and a
causative form.
(30) Georgian
a. წუხს cux-s sad-SBJ.3.SG ‘is sad’(stative)
b. წუხდება cux-d-eb-a sad-PASS
23
-THM-SBJ.3.SG ‘gets sad’(inchoative)
c. აწუხებს a-cux-eb-s CAUS-sad-THM-SBJ.3.SG ‘saddens’(causative)
23 Even though this form is called the ‘synthetic passive’or ‘doniani passive’in Georgian linguistics,
it is only one of four possible passive forms in Georgian and yields a reading that “partially corre-
sponds to the middle voice”(Harris 1981: 194f.) rather than a passive reading in the Indo-European
sense. One of its central characteristics is that it marks a change of state or inception (Cherchi 1997:
176f.).
Directionality in the psych alternation 177
(31) Yucatec Maya
a. yaj u y-óol painful POSS Ø-mind ‘be sad’(stative)
b. yaj-tal u y-óol painful-FIENT
24
POSS Ø-mind ‘get sad’(inchoative)
c. yaj-kúuns u y-óol painful-FACT POSS Ø-mind ‘sadden’(causative)
(32) Mapudungun
a. llađkü-y get.upset-IND.3 ‘gets upset’(inchoative)
b. llađkü-le-y get.upset-ST-IND.3 ‘is upset’(stative)
c. llađkü-lka-y get.upset-CAUS.FACT-IND.3 ‘makes upset’(causative)
As the examples in (30)–(32) show, languages vary as to which form is the most
morphologically simple: while it is the stative form in Georgian and Yucatec Maya,
Mapudungun lexicalizes the inchoative meaning as the most basic form. All forms
oppose a causative/factitive derivation which uniformly serves as the INDUCED
alternant. Given the binary opposition proposed by Nichols et al.’s (2004) typology,
the way the involved forms constellate is not surprising: the INDUCED alternant has a
clear functional delineation, as it renders the semantic causation of whatever the
PLAIN form encodes. In contrast, the PLAIN alternant is underspecified for lexical
aspect. This fuzziness does not pose a serious problem for Nichols et al.’s (2004)
account, in part due to the presence of eventive predicates in their list (cf. the
animate subset given in (3)). However, it is of major import in the psych domain
because of its ontological components. One of the core components of every psych
verb we laid out in (2) is a mental state, i.e., the psychological content at the core
predicate. The experiencer holding a certain mental state due to exposure to the
stimulus thus is a non-eventive situation (cf. Pylkkänen 2000).
25
As the authors note
themselves (Nichols et al. 2004: 156f.), languages show quite a bit of variation in the
lexicalization of concepts with some inherent stativity. Most languages typically
render this either immediately in a stative PLAIN alternant, or mediated via the addition
of a temporal boundary, resulting in an inchoative PLAIN alternant. For the European set
of languages where reduced pairs prevail, there is no immediate effect of stativity
versus inchoativity, because this configuration renders the mental state as an INDUCED
predicate first. Thus, even though languages of this type may also distinguish incho-
ative forms from stative ones, as shown in (33)–(34), this does not impact their overall
24 The fientive is a denominal word formation morpheme that denotes a change of state and can
thus be analyzed as an inchoative for our purposes (Lehmann 2015: 1434).
25 Note that we are not making any strong claims regarding the semantic decomposition of any
alternant at this stage (but see Fritz-Huechante et al. 2020; Piñón 2001), since we follow Nichols et al.
(2004) in basing our classification in (7) on morphological patterns. What is important for our account
is whether and how this inherent stativity is realized in the PLAIN (experiencer-oriented) alternant.
178 Rott et al.
classification, as the morphological relationship between the base (i.e. the (a) forms)
and the derived form (the (b) or (c) forms) remains one of reduction.
(33) Icelandic
a. hríf-a fascinate-INF ‘fascinate’(causative)
b. hríf-a-st fascinate-INF-MID ‘get fascinated’(inch.)
c. vera hrif-inn AUX fascinate-PTCP ‘be fascinated’(stative)
(34) Serbian
a. изненадити iznenad-iti surprise-INF ‘surprise’(causative)
b. изненадити се iznenad-iti se surprise-INF REFL ‘get surprised’(inch.)
c. је изненађен je iznenađ-en AUX surprise-PTCP ‘be surprised’(stative)
In strongly underspecified languages, this triadic setup is similarly unproblematic
with respect to typologization, as all three alternants are of equal morphological
complexity. The coexistence of a stative and an inchoative PLAIN exponent which
oppose a singular INDUCED form merely increases the overall size of the domain. Such a
situation is attested in Irish in our sample, as illustrated in (35), which resolves into
the two undirected tuples (35a) ∼(35c) and (35b) ∼(35c).
(35) Irish
a. anbhá a bheith ort dismay to be:INF on:2.SG ‘be dismayed’(stative)
b. anbhá a theacht ort dismay to come:INF on:2.SG ‘get dismayed’(inch.)
c. anbhá a chur dismay to put:INF ‘dismay’(causative)
For transitivizing languages however, the fact that both statives and inchoatives
canprovideasuitablebinaryalternanttoINDUCED predicates creates a systematic
problem. If an inchoative derived from a stative is juxtaposed as the PLAIN alternant
with a causativized stative as an INDUCED alternant, the two equally morphologically
complex items yield an undirected pair, as seen in the (b) and (c) forms in (30)–(32).
However, taking the stative as the PLAIN form, the same contrast results in an
augmented pair, as with (a) and (c) in (30)–(32). Due to the binary coding system in
ourdataset,thisthenyieldstwocoexistingpairsofdifferent types but with a shared
INDUCED alternant, creating the impression of a heterogeneous domain for these
languages. Crucially, valence orientation in the psych domain may thus fall out
from the need to identify a single PLAIN alternant. Note again that the patterns from
Mapudungun (32) show that this cannot be resolved by simply adopting the stative
alternant as the basic underlying form in the alternation (cf. Piñón 2001). In light of
the robust yet language-specific preference for either statives or inchoatives in
other languages, it seems clear that no a priori choice can be made. Rather, it seems
that due to the unique event semantics of the psych domain with its inclination for
Directionality in the psych alternation 179
stativity, an adequate typologization should accommodate all three forms if
possible. One solution could be to subsume underspecified languages and tran-
sitivizing ones under a single type, distinguishing instead of three valence orien-
tation types a causativizing from a causative-less alternation (the detransitivizing
type), crossed with a factor coding the availability of a stative and an inchoative
reading (to the logical exclusion of the feature combination [−stative, −inchoative],
since this would entail no alternation at all). The special status of the detransitiv-
izing type is supported by the survey of morphological means in Section 4.2.1, which
showed that augmented pairs and undirected pairs employ the same kinds of
morphemes, while we found that reduced pairs are formed in ways that rarely or
never occur in pairs with equal formal complexity across alternants. However,
exploring the ramifications of such a two-dimensional typology is beyond the scope
of the current contribution and should be addressed in future research.
The exact conditions for the occurrence of a triadic system in the psych domain
are as yet unclear. Our limited sample offers some evidence that overall morpho-
logical richness in the verbal domain and a predominance of agglutinative (or non-
fusional) morphology could play a role, since this facilitates the distinct expression of
both the inherent stativity as well as temporal boundaries such as the onset of the
mental state. In many other languages however, only one of these mechanisms tends
to be preferred, although individual verbs may differ (cf. Verhoeven 2010). Such
preferences may in turn be specific to the psych domain, as our Turkish data shows.
The dominant derivational relation here is augmentation (n= 44, 68.75% of our
sample), often from an overt anticausative with an inchoative reading (n= 27, 61.36%
of the augmenting subsample):
(36) Turkish
a. PLAIN
Adam kurtçuk-lar-dan endişe-len-ir.
man maggot-PL-ABL worry-INCH-PRS
‘The man is worried due to the maggots.’
b. INDUCED
Kurtçuk-lar adam-ıendişe-len-dir-ir.
maggot-PL man-ACC worry-INCH-CAUS-PRS
‘The maggots worry the man.’
The intransitive verbalizer marker -lAn-
26
is itself internally complex, consisting of
the general verbalizer -lA- and a morpheme -n- which has been analyzed as either a
26 Turkish exhibits vowel harmony in bound morphemes. Capital letters are used to generalize over
all variants of a given affix, e.g. -lAn- resolves to -lan- or -len- depending on the stem.
180 Rott et al.
passive marker (Bağrıaçık 2018) or a reflexive marker (Kornfilt 1997; see also Göksel
and Kerslake 2005: 56f.), both typical sources for anticausatives (Haspelmath 1990).
Strikingly, although the verbalizer on its own is highly productive outside the psych
domain, as the examples in (37) (based on Kornfilt 1997: 453f.) show, it is completely
absent from our sample, and forms such as **endişelemek are considered ungram-
matical by speakers (as opposed to the licit infinitive endişelenmek of (36a), -mAk
being an infinitival marker).
(37) a. su ‘water’>su-la-mak ‘irrigate’
b. kilit ‘lock’>kilit-le-mek ‘lock’
c. baş‘beginning’>baş-la-mak ‘begin’
d. Google >Google-la-mak
One reason for this might be the fact that the verbalizer -lA- is highly polysemous,
creating verbs with a large variety of aspectual semantics and argument linking
and different valency patterns (Bağrıaçık 2018), which could mean that the anti-
causative marker is required to express the stative nature of the psych situation. It
is worth noting that verbs derived in this way prefer overt causativization via the
suffix-dIr-, although there are other affixal constellations where verbs can form
corresponding transitives either via verbalizer -lA- or the complex transitive/
causative verbalizer -lAt- (Göksel and Kerslake 2005: 56f.). The former would create
a reduced alternation while the latter would yield an undirected pattern. The
differentiating factor is that the psych verbs formed in this way are largely derived
from nouns, which according to Göksel and Kerslake (2005: 56f.) bars the immediate
derivation of corresponding transitives from the root. Thus, while Turkish has a
large number of morphemes which could contribute to a triad of forms on par with
(30)–(34), this does not happen due to idiosyncratic grammatical restrictions.
Rather, it seems that many of the anticausatives can be used with both stative and
inchoative readings. The remainder of the augmenting set does not use the
morpheme -lAn-, and is either inherently stative/inchoative (e.g. kızmak ‘be ∼get
angry’,korkmak ‘be afraid’,coşmak ‘get excited’) or has other morphological
markers with similar functions (e.g. sevinmek ‘be happy’from sev- ‘love’via an
intransitive reflexive verbalizer -In). Etymological research shows that such items
tend to derive from non-psych verbs via metaphorical extension, a common tra-
jectory of psych verb formation (e.g. ‘get angry’<‘get warm’for kızmak;‘get
excited’<‘boil up, overflow’for coşmak; see also Klein and Kutscher 2002; Kutscher
2009; Verhoeven 2007). The second largest group in Turkish is the set of undirected
verbal pairs (n= 12, 18.75%). These, too, are deeply shaped by their denominal
nature, as the examples in (38)–(39) illustrate.
Directionality in the psych alternation 181
(38) a. PLAIN
Adam ses-ten tedirgin ol-ur.
man noise-ABL worried be-PRS
‘The man feels uneasy about the noise.’
b. INDUCED
Ses adam-ıtedirgin ed-er.
noise man-ACC worried do-PRS
‘The noise worries the man.’
(39) a. PLAIN
Kız oyuncağ-ın-ın kaybolma-sın-a kahr-ol-ur.
girl toy-POSS.3.SG-GEN loss-POSS.3.SG-DAT sorrow-be-PRS
‘The girl is upset due to the loss of her toy.’
b. INDUCED
Oyuncağ-ın-ın kaybolma-sıkız-ıkahr-ed-er.
toy-POSS.3.SG-GEN loss-POSS.3.SG girl-ACC sorrow-do-PRS
‘The loss of her toy upsets the girl.’
Essentially in light verb constructions similar to examples (15) and (26), we find a
constellation of statives (the (a) alternants) and causatives (the (b) alternants) as a
product of the verbalization strategy of the psych nominals. Word formation thus
plays a central role in the patterns of the Turkish psych domain and may at least in
part explain why, although Turkish would appear to be a good candidate for a triadic
psych alternation, the internal structures of the domain do not yield this pattern.
Additionally, observe that the univerbation in example (39) (also attested in our
dataset for the pair mahvolmak ‘be devastated’∼mahvetmek ‘devastate’) may shed
some light on how the periphrastic accommodation of stative nominal psych ex-
pressions may over time give rise to undirected alternations even if a language
makes heavy use of directed alternations elsewhere (cf. also the more marginal
existence of such pairs in detransitivizing languages, e.g. German Angst haben,
Spanish tener miedo ‘be scared’, literally ‘have fear’∼Angst machen,dar miedo
‘scare’, literally ‘make/give fear’).
4.2.4 The impact of word formation and lexical restrictions
Word formation was also found to be a key factor for other languages with a more
mixed picture. Since we have discussed the patterns of Finnish elsewhere (see Rott
et al. 2020), we will only give a brief summary here: In short, this language employs
similar morphemes for the purpose of psych verb formation as well as creating the
alternation (chiefly causatives, factitives and inchoatives for the former, causatives
and inchoatives for the latter). Often, this leads to multiple derivations occurring on
the same root, creating a heterogeneous picture.
182 Rott et al.
(40) Finnish alternating verbs from nominal into ‘enthusiasm’
a. inno-sta-a
27
enthuasiasm-FACT-INF ‘excite’(causative)
b. inno-st-u-a enthuasiasm-FACT-INCH-INF ‘get excited’(inchoative)
c. inno-st-u-tta-a enthuasiasm-FACT-INCH-CAUS-INF ‘make excited’(causative)
(41) Finnish alternating verbs from nominal kiukku ‘anger’
a. kiuku-tta-a anger-CAUS-INF ‘annoy’(causative)
b. kiukku-untu-a anger-INCH-INF ‘get annoyed’(inchoative)
The psych nominal in (40) gives rise to two pairs of opposite directionality, a reduced
pair ((40a) ∼(40b)) and an augmented pair ((40b) ∼(40c)). Conversely, the psych
nominal in (41) only creates one undirected pair via the exchange of the suffixes. The
exact choice of strategy appears to be lexically determined (see Rott et al. 2020), and
may be related to more fine-grained semantic distinctions of both the psych situation
to be lexicalized as well as the lexical material enlisted for the purpose (e.g. future vs.
past orientation in emotional domains such as fear or the increased likelihood of
certain emotions such as anger or disgust to elicit an outward action). Nearly half of
our Finnish sample was found to be synchronically denominal (n= 48, 48.44%) and
instantiated different constellations of these strategies, as can be seen in Figure 2.
Deverbal items were also well-attested (n= 12, 20%). A similar situation can be found
in Cab´
ecar, where different verbalization strategies may apply and combine (42),
creating both an undirected pair ((42a) ∼(42b)) and an augmented pair ((42b) ∼(42c))
which share an inchoative alternant.
(42) Cab´
ecar alternating verbs from nominal dokó ‘ugly’
a. dokó-w-a
ugly-CAUS-INF ‘disgust’(causative)
b. dokó-n-a
ugly-MID-INF ‘get disgusted’(inchoative)
c. dokó-n-´
e
-w-a
ugly-MID-NMLZ-CAUS-INF ‘make get disgusted’(causative)
The Hungarian psych domain is characterized by strategies in complementary dis-
tribution, i.e. the same form was rarely involved in the formation of multiple pairs,
but rather different bases were lexically determined to take different arrays of
suffixes (with different allomorphs for each morphological operation, a character-
istic trait of Hungarian, cf. Nilsen Márkus 2015), as seen in the undirected pair in (43),
the reduced pair in (44), and the augmented pair in (45).
27 Finnish exhibits consonant gradation where the phonological makeup of stems can alter in the
context of suffixation. Thus forms such as inno- and kiuku- are contextual variants of the root into and
kiukku, respectively.
Directionality in the psych alternation 183
(43) Hungarian alternating verbs from nominal k´
ep ‘image, manner’
a. el-k´
ep-ed away-image-INCH ‘get bewildered’(inchoative)
b. el-k´
ep-eszt away-image-CAUS ‘abash, bewilder’(causative)
(44) Hungarian alternating verbs from nominal hang ‘voice’(via hangol ‘tune’)
a. le-hang-ol down-voice-VLZR ‘deject’(causative)
b. le-hang-ol-ódik down-voice-VLZR-INCH ‘get dejected’(inchoative)
(45) Hungarian alternating verbs from verbal szór ‘scatter’
a. szór-akozik scatter-REFL ‘have fun’(stative)
b. szór-akoz-tat scatter-REFL-CAUS ‘entertain’(causative)
Compared to Finnish, Hungarian seems to draw more heavily on categorially
underspecified bases in its psych domain (n=∼22, ∼46%), which may factor in the
more pronounced trend toward lexical specification, as the derivational relations are
much more synchronically opaque.
28
In all of the above circumstances, word formation and concomitant lexical
information heavily impacts the patterns of the alternation and contributes to
domain-specific heterogeneity.
5 Conclusion
Using a large sample of novel naturalistic and parallelized data, we could show that
the behavior of alternating predicates in the psych domain aligns in part with gen-
eral predictions from Nichols et al.’s (2004) overall valence orientation typology.
Most importantly, it could be shown that cross-linguistic differences in the direc-
tionality of the psych alternation largely hold between languages and not between
verbs. Individual languages show preferences for one of the alternation strategies
(augmented, reduced, undirected) which is then pervasive in their psych inventory,
while the alternative patterns are marginally represented. Furthermore, the present
study revealed similar areal patterns in alternation directionality as identified in
Nichols et al. (2004): the Indo-European languages of the geographic area of North-
western Europe stand out in being detransitivizing in the psych domain whereas
transitivizing and underspecified languages do not show areal patterns. Moreover,
28 Based on common tendencies in the diachrony of psych verb formation (Klein and Kutscher 2002),
one may speculate that such synchronically acategorial bases (or rather, synchronically verbal bases)
originate from similar lexical sources which have been lost over time and could be found to exhibit
the same word formation effects, given data with sufficient time depth.
184 Rott et al.
we found a significant impact of alignment type on the occurrence of alternation
strategies in the examined inventory: reducing strategies are significantly less
frequent in languages with ergative traits compared to languages without ergative
traits whereas augmented pairs occur frequently in both language types. Our data
also showed a positive effect of alignment in the undirected strategies meaning that
undirected pairs are significantly more frequent in languages with ergative traits
(similarly present in Nichols et al.’s 2004 study), which was tentatively identified as
being epiphenomenal to the nominal make-up of the psych domain.
Upon closer inspection, the specific features of the psych domain (inherent
stativity of a psych situation, psych-specific lexicalization and word formation
strategies) could be shown to impact alternations in a domain-specific way. Some
languages actually create a triad of forms rather than a binary, opposing a stative, an
inchoative and a causative form. For languages with a derived INDUCED alternant this
accounts for the unexpected pattern heterogeneity that we found in some languages
(e.g. Georgian, Yucatec Maya). We tentatively proposed that overall morphological
richness in the verbal domain and a predominance of agglutinative (or non-fusional)
morphology could play out here, since this facilitates the distinct expression of both
the inherent stativity as well as temporal boundaries such as the onset of the mental
state. Further properties that contribute to a greater heterogeneity in the patterns of
alternation directionality in individual languages include peculiarities of psych verb
formation, which result in multiple derivations occurring on the same root (Finnish,
Cab´
ecar) or lexically conditioned coexistence of multiple morphological operations
(Hungarian). These latter issues call for a refinement of alternation typology in order
to more adequately accommodate this semantic domain which makes up a large part
of the ‘animate undergoer’feature combination of alternating verbs.
Supplementary Materials
Primary data
–datasheet “data”includes primary data listing all alternating psych verb pairs
and classifications used in the analysis;
–datasheet “languages”includes the list of the sample languages, language fam-
ilies, geographical coordinates, and typological properties used in the analysis;
–datasheet “examples”includes elicited sentence examples of the sample verbs;
–datasheet “glosses”lists all morphological glosses used in the examples.
Statistics
–markdown of the R script used for the visualizations and statistical analyses.
The link to the Supplementary Materials is given at the end of the article.
Directionality in the psych alternation 185
Abbreviations
Ø meaningless element
3 third person
ABS absolutive
ACC accusative
AUX auxiliary
AVERS aversive
CAUS causative
COM comitative
D2 second person deictic
DAT dative
DEF definite
DEM demonstrative
EO experiencer object
ERG ergative
ES experiencer subject
Ffeminine
FACT factitive
FIENT fientive
FUT future
GEN genitive
HUM human
IND indicative
LOC locative
Mmasculine
MID middle voice
NMLZ nominalizer
NOM nominative
OBJ object
OBL oblique
POSS possessive
PFV perfective
PL plural
PRS present
PST past
PTCP participle
REFL reflexive
SBJ subject
SG singular
STAT stative
THM theme vowel
Acknowledgements: The authors would like to thank their native speaker
consultants and language experts who provided and discussed with us the
language data for the present study: Laetitia Andriamiadana (Malagasy), Rusudan
186 Rott et al.
Asatiani (Georgian), Golpar Bahar (Persian), Noa Bassel (Hebrew), Stefania Ciufu
(Romanian), Lorena Ciutacua (Romanian), Amedee Colli Colli (Yucatec Maya), Alvaro
Cortes (Basque), Günışığı Zan Diemer (Turkish), Lionel Emil (Nafsan/South Efate),
Guillermo Gonzáles Campos (Cab´
ecar), Enni Hartikainen (Finnish), Nóra Hausel
(Hungarian), Ivona Ilić(Serbian), Sylvanus Job (Khoekhoegowab), Bl´
e François Kipr´
e
(B´
et´
e), Till Kulawik (German), Rama Kulkarni (Marathi, Hindi), Ana Krajinović
(Nafsan/South Efate), Freddy Martinez (Cab´
ecar), Tal Orenshtein (Hebrew), Alba
Rodríguez (Spanish), Dóra Sági (Hungarian), Sólveig Thoroddsen Jónsdóttir
(Icelandic), Dongcheol Son (Korean), Sharangan Thevathas (Tamil), Gearóid Ua
Laoghaire (Irish), Jennifer Vivanco Manquepi (Mapudungun), Henok Wondimu
(Amharic), Jiangling Zhang (Chinese), Fernando Zúñiga (Mapudungun), Fidelia
Zúñiga Hernandez (Cab´
ecar). They also thank Jette Fortmann, Ivona Ilić, Till
Kulawik, Rama Kulkarni, David Müller and Nico Lehmann for support with data
elicitation and/or processing.
Author contribution: The contents of the present work are based on joint work and
discussions by all three authors. Julian A. Rott had the main responsibility for the
empirical study (set-up of elicitation and analysis tools, individual work with
language consultants and experts on most languages included). Elisabeth Verhoeven
is responsible for the conceptualization of the study and the formal analysis; she
supervised the work at all stages. She collected and analyzed the Yucatec Mayan and
Cab´
ecar data. Paola Fritz-Huechante collected and analyzed the Spanish and Korean
data and supervised the collection of the Mapudungun data. The article was jointly
written by Julian A. Rott and Elisabeth Verhoeven; Julian A. Rott had the main
responsibility for Sections 1, 2, 3, 4.2.1, 4.2.3 and 4.2.4. Elisabeth Verhoeven had the
main responsibility for Sections 4.1, 4.2.2 and 5.
Research funding: This article is part of the project VE 570/1-3 On the typology of the
psych alternation in morphology, syntax and discourse, funded by the German
Research Foundation (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft).
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