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In:Beyond Emotions in Language: Psychological verbs at the interfaces
Edited by Bożena Rozwadowska and Anna Bondaruk
[Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today 263] 2020
► pp. 213–244

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Chapter 6
The information structure of high and low datives and their psychological import

 | University of Seville
Published online: 8 December 2020
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/la.263.06jim
I discuss the syntax and discourse properties of (Experiencer) datives in Spanish, in a comparative view with the syntactic strategies used in other languages such as English, which do not easily exhibit the pattern OVS in (broadly speaking) psychological constructions. I address a crucial distinction between high datives and low datives (Harley, 1995; Pylkkänen, 2002, 2008; Cuervo, 2003; Schäfer, 2012 or McIntyre, 2006), and propose that in all-focus sentences when there is a high dative, the dative occurs in first position. On the other hand, low datives show up in postverbal position in broad-focus sentences. If by any chance, these low datives occur at the initial portion of the sentence, it is because the discourse interpretation is not that of broad focus and hence either a topic-comment or background-focus configuration must be called for.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Towards a semantic classification of datives
  • 3.Two diagnostics for two types of datives
  • 4.High and low applicatives and information structure
    • 4.1High applicatives, intervention and information structure
    • 4.2Low applicatives, information structure and word order
  • 5.Concluding remarks
  • Notes
  • References
References (64)
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Cited by (1)

Cited by one other publication

Bondaruk, Anna
2020.  The syntax of accusative and dative Experiencers in Polish. In Beyond Emotions in Language [Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today, 263], ► pp. 141 ff. DOI logo

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