Chapter 5. The syntax of accusative and dative Experiencers in Polish

Abstract

The chapter examines the syntax of accusative and dative Experiencers found with stative Object Experiencer verbs in Polish with a view to determining whether they are associated with an unaccusative structure (Belletti & Rizzi, 1988; Pesetsky, 1995; Landau, 2010a) or are simply transitive (Grafmiller, 2013). Binding and passivization properties of the two types of Experiencer in Polish indicate that they are syntactically special, with accusative Experiencers forming a part of complex unergative structure as in Bennis (2004), and dative Experiencers occupying a Spec,vP position. The analysis of two linear orders of accusative and dative Experiencers with respect to the Target/Subject Matter (hence, T/SM) argument demonstrates that in the Experiencer-first order, the Experiencer is scrambled to an A’-position, whereas the T/SM remains in situ, while in the T/SM-first order, the T/SM comes to occupy the Spec,TP position, while the Experiencer is not affected by movement.