ABSTRACT Title of Dissertation: ON EXPERIENCERS AND MINIMALITY Maria Carolina de O A Petersen, Doctor of Philosophy, 2016 Dissertation directed by: Professor Norbert Hornstein, Professor Howard Lasnik, Department of Linguistics This dissertation is concerned with experiencer arguments, and what they tell us about the grammar. There are two main types of experiencers I discuss: experiencers of psychological verbs and experiencers of raising constructions. I question the notion of ‘experiencers’ itself; and explore some possible accounts for the ‘psych-effects’. I argue that the ‘experiencer theta role’ is conceptually unnecessary and unsustained by syntactic evidence. ‘Experiencers’ can be reduced to different types of arguments. Taking Brazilian Portuguese as my main case study, I claim that languages may grammaticalize psychological predicates and their arguments in different ways. These verb classes exist in languages independently, and the psych-verbs behavior can be explained by the argument structure of the verbal class they belong to. I further discuss experiencers in raising structures, and the defective intervention effects triggered by different types of experiencers (e.g., DPs, PPs, clitics, traces) in a variety of languages. I show that defective intervention is mostly predictable across languages, and there’s not much variation regarding its effects. Moreover, I argue that defective intervention can be captured by a notion of minimality that requires interveners to be syntactic objects and not syntactic occurrences (a chain, and not a copy/trace). The main observation is that once a chain is no longer in the c-command domain of a probe, defective intervention is obviated, i.e., it doesn’t apply. I propose a revised version of the Minimal Link Condition (1995), in which only syntactic objects may intervene in syntactic relations, and not copies. This view of minimality can explain the core cases of defective intervention crosslinguistically. ON EXPERIENCERS AND MINIMALITY by Maria Carolina de O A Petersen Dissertation submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of the University of Maryland, College Park, in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy 2016 Advisory Committee: Professor Norbert Hornstein, Chair and Co-Advisor Professor Howard Lasnik, Chair and Co-Advisor Associate Professor Michael Israel, Dean’s Representative Professor Jairo Nunes Professor Juan Uriagereka © Copyright by Maria Carolina de O A Petersen 2016 Dedication To my mother, Dora, and in memory of my late grandfather, Tote. ii Acknowledgements There are many people that contributed to the successful accomplishment of this dissertation, and to cite everyone would be a very difficult thing. I will try to make this as brief as possible, and by doing so I will surely miss some names. I apologize for that in advance. I wouldn’t be able to write this dissertation or go through my doctorate if it weren’t for the tremendous help of my advisors, Norbert Hornstein and Howard Lasnik. I owe so much to them, both of them are very enthusiastic and encouraging in their own way. There’s a great advantage to have two main advisors, especially when they naturally focus on different issues. Every discussion I had with them brought me new insights. Norbert is typically more concerned about the big questions and the big picture, while Howard can focus on the smallest detail one can think of. Having their assistance greatly improved my writing and research over the years. I am so grateful for their patience, attention, and guidance. I am also grateful for my committee members, Micheal Israel, Jairo Nunes, and Juan Uriagereka, for taking the time to read and think about my work. Michael and Juan, thanks for all great questions and nice conversations. Jairo, thank you so much for opening up some time for an old advisee, it’s always a privilege to work with you. It was a pleasure to have worked with my co-authors Mihaela Marchis Moreno and Arhonto Terzi. Mihaela was a very good friend through my PhD, and I had a nice time traveling to conferences to present our work, which was fruitful and fun. Arhonto was a valuable friend over my PhD years, and a great work partner! I am very honored for all her help and advice. During my PhD years, I had incredible experiences with so may people in Maryland! I enjoyed the conversations with professors Valentine Haquard, Jeff Lidz, Alexander Williams, Collin Philips, Paul Pietroski, Tonia Bleam, Peggy Antonisse, Omer Preminger. Thank you for your comments on my work and contributions to my growth! I also want to thank Kathi Faulkingham, Kim Kwok, and Denise Best for their help with administrative processes. I’d like to extend my appreciation to some of my dear colleagues that I will miss very much from those five years, as well as people that provided me with data and judgments: Julie Gerard, Shota Momma, Sayaka Goto, Yakov Kronrod, Kenshi Funakoshi, Angela He, Dongwoo Park, Gesoel Mendes, Yuki Ito, Alexis Wellwoods, Dustin Chacón, Brooke Larson, Margherita Morando, Mariana Hermann, Sigríður Björnsdóttir, Tom Grano, Max Papillon, Mihaela Marchis, Arhonto Terzi, Sol Lago, Adolfo Ausín, Renato Lacerda, Valentine Hacquard, and Annemarie Van Dooren. Many people from my home country, Brazil, supported me throughout this past 5 years; they were close friends even in the immense distance. I want to thank my family, for understanding my choices and helping me achieve my dreams. I have an eternal gratitude to my mother Dora and my brother Tony, who cheered for me all along. I’d like to thank my grandmother Jujú for being an example of kindness and love to me. Grandma Jujú sometimes tells me the story of when I was about 5. She asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I said “I don’t know.’ She asked: “A iii doctor?” I said: “No, I don’t deserve it.” And she laughed at that once we knew I was coming to work on my PhD at the University of Maryland. It seems like that is what I wanted after all (although she originally meant it as a medical doctor). Other family and friends from Brazil that I miss dearly: Rita Burgos, Cecília Burgos, Pati Leite, Ana Clara, Analuzia Lemos, Marília Matos, Talita Nogueira, Vanessa Lisboa, the Lucy In The Sky and the Flauer. Lastly, but far from least, there is my husband and best friend, Jordan Kocuba. I don’t know what words to use when expressing my appreciation for sharing your life with mine. I am grateful for your endless support, patience, and love. You are wonderful; you are my world. iv Table of Contents Dedication .......................................................................................................... ii Acknowledgements ........................................................................................... iii Table of Contents ............................................................................................... v Chapter 1: Introduction ................................................................................... 1 1.1 Overview .................................................................................................. 1 1.2 Experiencers, theta theory, and psych-verbs ............................................ 2 1.3 Defective intervention and Minimality ..................................................... 5 Chapter 2: Experiencers and Theta Theory .................................................. 9 2.1 Theta roles .............................................................................................. 10 2.2 Thematic Theory ..................................................................................... 12 2.2.1 Baker (1988, 1997) .................................................................................... 13 2.2.1.1 Agents and Patients/Themes ................................................................... 14 2.2.1.2 Thematic theory ...................................................................................... 15 2.2.1.3 Relative versus Absolute UTAH .............................................................. 16 2.2.1.4 Evidence for Absolute UTAH .................................................................. 18 2.2.2 Dowty (1991) ............................................................................................. 19 2.2.2.1 The proto-roles ................................................................................ 20 2.3 Experiencers and Theta Theory .............................................................. 22 2.4 Psych-verbs and Experiencers ................................................................ 24 2.4.1 Belleti & Rizzi (1988) ................................................................................ 24 2.4.2 Eventivity and stativity - Pesetsky (1995), Arad (1998), and Landau (2010) ............................................................................................................................. 37 2.4.2.1 The accounts ........................................................................................... 37 2.4.2.2 Inherent Case and the unaccusativity of Experiencers ........................... 48 2.4.2.3 LF movement and subjecthood ............................................................... 58 2.4.3 Absolute UTAH and other solutions for Experiencers ........................ 63 2.5 Experiencers and the Theta-Theory: a discussion .................................. 65 2.5.1 Theta Theory: do we need it? ..................................................................... 65 2.5.2 How many roles? ......................................................................................