Some Notes on Experiencer Causatives and DOM in Romanian

Abstract

This paper focuses on object experiencer (OE) causatives in Romanian, identifying a less discussed pattern of variation. The results of a pilot study indicate that for a class of speakers such predicates are not grammatical with an indefinite object, if the latter is not differentially marked. A second class of speakers can accept unmarked objects but only if access to direct evidence of the event is available. As these restrictions set aside OE causatives from physical causatives, a non-trivial question refers to the nature of this difference. An analysis is proposed that revolves around a pragmatic distinction between OE verbs and physical causatives. More precisely, insights put forward by pragmatic investigations of OE verbs have consolidated the observation, which we follow here, that these types of predicates presuppose a perception event in which the object of the asserted event is a perceiver. We further propose that the perception presupposition can be established in the context either by differential object marking (DOM), which has an independently motivated sentience feature, or by direct evidence. Subsequently, we also show that an analysis along these lines gives better results when addressing these types of splits against more general interactions between causatives, inanimate subjects and DOM; under previous accounts, the facts under discussion are either unpredicted or not straightforward to derive.