Emotionsverben im Estnischen: Konstruktionsvarianz und Kausalstruktur

Abstract


 
 
 The article deals with the constructional variation of emotion predicates in Estonian. It gives an overview of constructional types, including information on their quantitative distribution. I show that one characteristic of Estonian is the formation of pairs of converses, i.e. paired emotion verbs, which have the same emotional semantics but different argument realisation patterns. These converses are based on derivational morphology, such as the causative morpheme -ta ‘CAUS’. Causative derivation has been adduced in the theoretical literature as support for the assumption that the cross-linguistically widespread constructional variation in emotion predicates has its origin in a difference in the causal structure in verbal semantics. The article shows that the data for Estonian contradict this assumption.