A diachronic view of Psychological verbs with Dative Experiencers in Spanish and Romanian

We offer a diachronic view of Spanish/Romanian Psychological constructions with Dative Experiencers, which are not always stative. Spanish constructions with Dative Experiencers can be telic, with an aspectual reflexive, or stative, without reflexive. The contrast exists in the earliest documents, and guides the evolution of Psychological constructions in the postmedieval period to the present. In earlier Spanish/Romanian, Dative Experiencers could be in High Applicatives encoded as a clitic, with or without Dative phrase. Alternatively, Experiencers could be in Locative Phrases, encoded as just a Dative Phrase/ pronoun, without clitic. The Locative type was lost, so Dative Experiencers became Applicatives with obligatory clitics in Spanish/Romanian. Nominatives became obligatory in Psychological constructions with Dative Experiencers in Spanish, but not Romanian. Earlier Spanish/Romanian shared nominativeless constructions with Oblique Themes found in present Romanian but not Spanish, where they are restricted to inalienable possession.

Published online: 30 November 2009
https://doi.org/10.1075/cilt.308.12riv