On Scalarity in the Verbal Domain. The Case of Polish Psych Verbs. Part 1: Polish Perfective Psych Verbs and Their Prefixes

Polish perfective psych verbs are generally analyzed as inceptive predicates focusing the beginning of an emotional state holding of an experiencer. However, a perfective psych verb can also denote an event of gradual scalar change. In this paper, I argue that on the inceptive reading a perfective psych predicate denotes a transition from a state in which p does not hold to a state in which p holds of an experiencer. In events of gradual change, there is an increase in the degree on the scale of intensity of a given psych state or on the (abstract) extent scale contributed by a verb’s argument. As the internal temporal structure of the events denoted by perfective psych predicates can depend on elements of syntactic context outside the verb, the domain of aspectual composition in Polish is not the verb, pace Rothstein (2020), but VoiceP/vP.

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On Scalarity in the Verbal Domain. The Case of Polish Psych Verbs. Part 2: The Aspectual Classes of Polish Psych Verbs, Perfectivity, and Scales

Studies in Polish Linguistics ◽

10.4467/23005920spl.21.003.13957 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 16 (1) ◽

pp. 41-71

Author(s):

Ewa Willim

Keyword(s):

Emotional State ◽

Temporal Structure ◽

Gradual Change ◽

Psych Verbs ◽

Syntactic Context ◽

Psych Verb

Dokonane czasowniki stanów emocjonalnych sązwykle analizowane jako czasowniki wyróżniające fazępoczątkowądanego stanu. Te same predykaty mogąw pewnych kontekstach składniowych wyrażaćznaczenia ewolutywne. W artykule przedstawiona jest hipoteza, że w kontekstach inicjalnych, czasownik wyraża moment zaistnienia stanu w nosicielu. W kontekstach ewolutywnych predykat wyraża stopniowązmianęna skali intensywności stanu lub stopniowe nabycie stanu przez wszystkie części podzielnego argumentu czasownika. Zależnośćinterpretacji wewnętrznej struktury temporalnej zdarzeńod kontekstu składniowego pokazuje, wbrew tezie zawartej w pracy Rothstein (2020), że interpretacja rodzaju zdarzenia nie jest określona na poziomie czasownika dokonanego, ale ustalana jest na poziomie struktury zdaniowej (VoiceP/vP). ABSTRACT Polish perfective psych verbs are generally analyzed as inceptive predicates denoting the beginning of an emotional state holding of an experiencer. However, a perfective psych verb can also denote an event of gradual scalar change. In this paper, I argue that on the inceptive reading a perfective psych predicate denotes a transition from a state in which p does not hold to a state in which p holds of an experiencer. In events of gradual change, there is an increase in the degree on the scale of intensity of a given psych state or on the (abstract) extent scale contributed by a verb’s argument. As the internal temporal structure of the events denoted by perfective psych predicates can depend on elements of syntactic context outside the verb, the domain of aspectual composition in Polish is not the verb, pace Rothstein (2020), but VoiceP/vP.

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Iconicity in argument structure

Sign Language & Linguistics ◽

10.1075/sll.20.1.03oom ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 20 (1) ◽

pp. 55-108 ◽

Cited By ~ 7

Author(s):

Marloes Oomen

Keyword(s):

Argument Structure ◽

The Body ◽

Psychological State ◽

First Person ◽

Sentence Structure ◽

Sign Languages ◽

Psychological States ◽

Place Of Articulation ◽

Psych Verbs ◽

Psych Verb

Abstract A long tradition of psych-verb research in spoken languages has demonstrated that they constitute a class of their own, both semantically and syntactically. This study presents a description and analysis of psych-verbs in Sign Language of the Netherlands (NGT) in order to investigate whether this verb type displays comparable peculiarities in sign languages. The study is primarily based on data from the Corpus NGT (Crasborn et al. 2008). Firstly, the data indicate that all psych-verbs in NGT select a subject Experiencer. Secondly, it is shown that there is an iconic property of psych-verbs in NGT that lays bare a conceptual link between psychological states and locative relations: body-anchoring. The location singled out by the place of articulation of a psych-verb is associated with the metaphoric location of an emotion, or a type of behavior associated with the expression of an emotion. It is furthermore argued that the body as a whole iconically represents the container of a psychological state. The body is analyzed as a possessive determiner that may receive a first person specification as a consequence of body-anchoring. The data support such an analysis, as they suggest that sentences without an overt Experiencer yield a default first person interpretation. Thus, it is claimed that iconicity affects sentence structure and as such should be incorporated into the formal grammar system. Given that body-anchoring is the source of the effects mentioned above, it may be hypothesized that psych-verbs in NGT do not constitute a class of its own, but rather belong to a larger class of iconically motivated body-anchored verbs that share the properties mentioned above.

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Not all object experiencers are the same: The role of se and the argument structure of Serbian psych verbs anticausatives

Bucharest Working Papers in Linguistics ◽

10.31178/bwpl.22.2.4 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 22 (2) ◽

pp. 77-96

Author(s):

Peđa Kovačević

Keyword(s):

Argument Structure ◽

Standard Approach ◽

Middle Ground ◽

Syntactic Structures ◽

Psych Verbs ◽

Structural Differences ◽

Number Of Authors ◽

Psych Verb

The goal of this paper is to account for the observation that some Serbian object experiencer anticausatives take instrumental NPs as expressions of the causer participant whereas others take od(‘from’)- PPs. Following a number of authors (Alexiadou et al. 2013, Doron 2014, Anagnostopoulou & Samioti 2014, a. o.), I assume that differences in the licensing of expressions introducing event participants point in the direction of structural differences in terms of presence/absence of certain layers of verbal structure. The observed difference is accounted for by assuming that instrumental NPs are syntactically licensed by VoiceP while od(‘from’)-PPs are rejected by VoiceP owing to a semantic clash. Consequently, full VoiceP structure is present with psych verb anticausatives that license instrumental NPs and absent with psych verb anticauatives that license od(‘from’)-PPs. The analysis presented in the paper has implications for the syntactic and semantic status of SE as well. It is suggested that Chierchia’s (2004) reflexive approach to anticausatives can be extended to psych verb anticausatives which license instrumental NPs whereas the standard approach (Schäfer & Vivanco 2016) should be retained for typical anticausatives with inanimate internal arguments and object experiencers that license od (‘from’)-PPs. Such a “middle-ground” solution follows from the syntactic structures I propose for these two different sets of psych verb anticausatives.

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Effect of Emotions in a Lexical Decision Task

Swiss Journal of Psychology ◽

10.1024/1421-0185/a000193 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 76 (2) ◽

pp. 71-79 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Hélène Maire ◽

Renaud Brochard ◽

Jean-Luc Kop ◽

Vivien Dioux ◽

Daniel Zagar

Keyword(s):

Lexical Decision ◽

Lexical Decision Task ◽

Emotional State ◽

Control Group ◽

Decision Task ◽

Attentional Orienting ◽

Emotional States ◽

Sequence Effect ◽

Emotion Induction ◽

Before And After

Abstract. This study measured the effect of emotional states on lexical decision task performance and investigated which underlying components (physiological, attentional orienting, executive, lexical, and/or strategic) are affected. We did this by assessing participants’ performance on a lexical decision task, which they completed before and after an emotional state induction task. The sequence effect, usually produced when participants repeat a task, was significantly smaller in participants who had received one of the three emotion inductions (happiness, sadness, embarrassment) than in control group participants (neutral induction). Using the diffusion model ( Ratcliff, 1978 ) to resolve the data into meaningful parameters that correspond to specific psychological components, we found that emotion induction only modulated the parameter reflecting the physiological and/or attentional orienting components, whereas the executive, lexical, and strategic components were not altered. These results suggest that emotional states have an impact on the low-level mechanisms underlying mental chronometric tasks.

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Associations Between Self-Report of Emotional State and the EEG Patterns in Affective Disorders Patients

Journal of Psychophysiology ◽

10.1027/0269-8803/a000004 ◽

2010 ◽

Vol 24 (1) ◽

pp. 33-40 ◽

Cited By ~ 7

Author(s):

Miroslaw Wyczesany ◽

Jan Kaiser ◽

Anton M. L. Coenen

Keyword(s):

State Energy ◽

Emotional State ◽

Spectral Power ◽

Bipolar Affective Disorder ◽

Affective State ◽

Manic Episode ◽

High Energy ◽

Self Report ◽

Major Depressive ◽

High Tension

The study determines the associations between self-report of ongoing emotional state and EEG patterns. A group of 31 hospitalized patients were enrolled with three types of diagnosis: major depressive disorder, manic episode of bipolar affective disorder, and nonaffective patients. The Thayer ADACL checklist, which yields two subjective dimensions, was used for the assessment of affective state: Energy Tiredness (ET) and Tension Calmness (TC). Quantitative analysis of EEG was based on EEG spectral power and laterality coefficient (LC). Only the ET scale showed relationships with the laterality coefficient. The high-energy group showed right shift of activity in frontocentral and posterior areas visible in alpha and beta range, respectively. No effect of ET estimation on prefrontal asymmetry was observed. For the TC scale, an estimation of high tension was related to right prefrontal dominance and right posterior activation in beta1 band. Also, decrease of alpha2 power together with increase of beta2 power was observed over the entire scalp.

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Feel Thine Own Self – Mood Congruency Evaluation of Emotional State Adjectives

Journal of Psychophysiology ◽

10.1027/0269-8803/a000272 ◽

2020 ◽

pp. 1-17

Author(s):

Szczepan J. Grzybowski ◽

Miroslaw Wyczesany ◽

Jan Kaiser

Keyword(s):

Mood Induction ◽

Semantic Analysis ◽

Emotional State ◽

Time Window ◽

Event Related Potential ◽

Negativity Bias ◽

Positive Potential ◽

Semantic Access ◽

Current Mood ◽

Component Time

Abstract. The goal of the study was to explore event-related potential (ERP) differences during the processing of emotional adjectives that were evaluated as congruent or incongruent with the current mood. We hypothesized that the first effects of congruence evaluation would be evidenced during the earliest stages of semantic analysis. Sixty mood adjectives were presented separately for 1,000 ms each during two sessions of mood induction. After each presentation, participants evaluated to what extent the word described their mood. The results pointed to incongruence marking of adjective’s meaning with current mood during early attention orientation and semantic access stages (the P150 component time window). This was followed by enhanced processing of congruent words at later stages. As a secondary goal the study also explored word valence effects and their relation to congruence evaluation. In this regard, no significant effects were observed on the ERPs; however, a negativity bias (enhanced responses to negative adjectives) was noted on the behavioral data (RTs), which could correspond to the small differences traced on the late positive potential.

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