The structural characteristics and on-line comprehension of experiencer-verb sentences

Linda Cupples*

*Corresponding author for this work

    Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

    13 Citations (Scopus)

    Abstract

    Theme-experiencer verbs, like 'amuse', for which the experiencer is the object of an active clause (e.g., 'the joke amused the host'), are distinguished theoretically from action verbs, like 'clean', and experiencer-theme verbs, like 'cherish', for which the experiencer is the subject of an active clause. Three experiments are reported in which readers' comprehension of these verbs was examined using a meaning-classification paradigm. Active theme-experiencer sentences were read for longer than actives containing the other verb types. By contrast, passive theme-experiencer sentences resulted in fewer errors and shorter reading times than passives containing experiencer-theme verbs, and in terms of errors, theme-experiencer passives resembled adjectival structures. Findings were consistent with a previous account by Belletti and Rizzi of the syntactic differences between verb types, although a semantic explanation was not discounted. A correspondence between the language systems responsible for comprehension and production was implied, given the similarity between these results and those of a 1994 study by Ferreira.

    Original languageEnglish
    Pages (from-to)125-162
    Number of pages38
    JournalLanguage and Cognitive Processes
    Volume17
    Issue number2
    DOIs
    Publication statusPublished - 2002

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