Psych verbs in Japanese: Inchoativity and boundary types

Abstract

Psych(ological) verbs pose a problem to theories about argument realization that assume a uniform and universal mapping between semantic relations and syntactic configurations. A number of attempts try to explain variation in argument structure in terms of the aspectual differences, assuming that the argument realization of a predicate is a reflection of the temporal properties of the predicate to some extent. However, it is challenging to classify psych verbs into any of Vendler’s four aspectual classes because of the “inchoativity” of these verbs. In this study, we take the notion of 'boundary' and its different types as relevant semantic components to describe the internal temporal structure of predicates. We demonstrate that Japanese psych verbs are not aspectually homogeneous but include different types of inchoatives. Accordingly, we propose that the argument realizations of psych verbs can be ascribed to the types of the ‘boundary’ (i.e. left boundary, right = left boundary and its explicitness/implicitness) the predicates denote.