Linking Meaning to Language: Verbs of Psychological State and the Linking Problem

Linking Meaning to Language: Verbs of Psychological State and the Linking Problem

Joshua K. Hartshorne1 Timothy J. O'Donnell1

Yasutada Sudo2

Miki Uruwashi1

Jesse Snedeker1

1Department of Psychology, Harvard University, 33 Kirkland St., Cambridge, MA 02138

2Department of Linguistics and Philosophy, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 77 Massachusetts Avenue, 32-D808, Cambridge, MA 02139

Running Title: Linking meaning to language

Send Correspondence to

Joshua Hartshorne Massachusetts Institute of Technology 77 Massachusetts Avenue 46-4053H Cambridge, MA 02139

Email: [email protected] Tel: 617-253-3816

Acknowledgements: This work was presented at CogSci 2010 and benefited from comments there. The authors additionally

thank David Pesetsky for comments and NDSEG (JH), the Allport Memorial Fund (JH), and the NSF

(0921012; JS) for funding.

Abstract

To communicate, speakers must place the different participants of an event (e.g., causal agent,

affected entity) in predictable syntactic positions (e.g., subject, object) so that listeners will know

who did what to whom. While many of these mappings can be characterized by broad

generalizations – both within and across languages (e.g., semantic agents tend to be mapped onto

syntactic subjects) – not all verbs fit neatly into these generalizations. One set of difficult-to-

characterize verbs are those of psychological state: The experiencer of the state can appear as either

the subject (Mary fears/hates/loves John) or the direct object (Mary frightens/angers/delights John).

The present studies explore whether this variability in subject/object mapping may actually result

from subtle differences in these verbs’ underlying meanings. Specifically, we find that both English-

and Japanese-speakers use the typical duration of a psychological state to guide novel verb learning,

preferentially linking the experiencer of long-lived states to subject position and the experiencer of

short-lived states to object position. Thus, even psychological verbs may be subject to broad, cross-

linguistic linking generalizations, despite their notorious variability. However, we also find evidence

of language-specific learning biases, suggesting one source of cross-linguistic variation.

Key Words: verbs; psychological states; argument structure; thematic roles; psych verbs

Highlights

• We investigate intuitions about novel psych verbs in English and Japanese. • Speakers of both languages use semantics to infer syntactic structure. • Participants were more likely to map the experiencer of a long-lived state onto subject position

and a short-lived state onto object position. • However, we observed language-specific biases consistent with the distribution of verbs in each

language.

1. Introduction

1.1 The Linking Problem

To interpret the sentence Mary broke the vase, one must determine the kind of event described

(breaking), the participants in that event (Mary, the vase), and which participant played which role in the

event (Mary is the breaker, not breakee). A fundamental feature of natural languages is that the

mappings between the roles in an event and the positions in a syntactic structure are highly systematic

both within and between languages. For example, in English, the semantic agent of a causal event is

typically realized as the subject of sentence while the entity that undergoes a change of state is realized

as the object (Baker, 1988; Croft, 2012; Dowty, 1991; Levin & Rappaport Hovav, 2005; Tenny, 1994).1

Thus the breaker is the subject of break, the drier is the subject of dry and the liquidator is the subject of

liquidate. This generalization extends to novel words: Adults and children prefer an interpretation in

which The bear pilked the horse means the bear did something to the horse, not vice versa (Marantz,

1982; Pinker, 1989). This preference to map agents to subjects and patients to objects is present in

children as young as 20 months (Gertner et al., 2006). This is not an accidental fact about English; all

languages have systematic patterns for mapping the roles of causal events onto syntactic structures.

While many languages use the same mapping as English (agents are subjects and patients are objects),

other languages appear, on the surface at least, to reverse this pattern, with agents as objects and patients

as subjects (whether these “ergative” language truly reverse the linking patterns or only appear to do so

is a matter of some debate (Dixon, 1994; Levin, 1983, Levin & Rappaport Hovav, 2005; Marantz, 1984;

Pinker, 1989)). In both cases, the pattern is systematic and extends across a broad range of causal events.

These systematic mappings are central to theories of verb-argument structure. While there is

considerable debate about how the system is acquired and the inventory of semantic roles and syntactic

functions, theorists of all stripes acknowledge these systematic linkages and seek to explain them

1 For simplicity, here and throughout we focus on active verbs, though the theories cited do address passivized verbs as well. Discussions

of passives commonly involve syntactic movement or independent semantic and/or syntactic constructions.

(Baker, 1988; Bowerman, 1990; Dowty, 1991; Goldberg, 1995, 2006; Grimshaw, 1990; Jackendoff,

1990; Pinker, 1989).

However theories of argument structure must also account for cases where linking patterns

appear to be more diverse. Many events can be described by alternative sentences in which the same

event participant (agent, patient, goal, source, etc.) gets mapped to different syntactic positions (subject,

direct object, etc.). An object moving from Mary’s possession to John’s can be described by Mary gave

the package to John or John received the package from Mary. A single event might be called Mary

chasing John or John fleeing from Mary. Verbs of psychological state can map the experiencer of the

state onto subject position (John feared/hated/loved Mary) or object position (Mary

frightened/angered/delighted John).

Two explanations have been proposed for this variation. The first possibility is that there are

exceptions to the syntax-semantics mappings. These exceptions might apply to whole classes of verbs

(Jackendoff, 1990; Pinker, 1984), on a construction-to-construction basis (Goldberg, 1995; Tomasello,

2003), or in certain syntactic environments (Belletti & Rizzi, 1986; Grimshaw, 1990). The second

possibility is termed “finer-grained semantics” by Pesetsky (1995).

1.2 Finer-Grained Semantics

At the center of this hypothesis is a distinction between events in the world and the meanings of

the sentences that describe them. Although the examples above involve pairs of verbs that can describe

many of the same events (chase/flee, send/receive, fear/frighten), this does not mean that they

necessarily have the same meaning. There could be subtle differences between the meanings of these

verbs corresponding to alternate construals of the event. Once these differences are correctly described,

the syntax-semantics linking patterns may turn out to be fully consistent. Under this hypothesis, then, the

apparent inconsistency in linking is illusory; it arises because we have defined the semantic roles in

linking patterns too broadly.

This distinction between an event in the world and the construal of the event as encoded in

language is illustrated with respect to Figure 1. This figure can be described in several ways: a) Sally

threw the ball to John, b) Sally threw John the ball, or c) Sally gave John the ball. Each of these

sentences has a slightly different meaning (Beavers, 2011; Mazurkewich & White, 1984; Gropen et al.,

1989). (A) is true regardless of whether John catches the ball, while (b) and (c) require that he receives

it. (C) is true regardless of how Sally moved the ball, while (a) and (b) require ballistic motion through

the air. This distinction between the event that a sentence refers to and the construal of the event that is

encoded in the meaning of that sentence (reception, ballistic motion, etc.) has proven extremely useful in

linguistic theory, and theories of linking typically assume that it is this construed meaning (semantic

structure) which guides syntactic encoding (Levin & Rappaport Hovav, 2005). Thus, it is possible that

the problematic cases described above arise because the same event can be construed in different ways,

giving rise to different semantic structures which then are mapped onto syntax in highly consistent ways.

Fig. 1. An event which can be described in different ways(Sally threw the ball to John, Sally threw John

the ball, Sally gave John the ball, etc).

The finer-grained semantics approach has been successfully applied to other problementic cases

of syntactic alternations. For instance, Rappaport and Levin (1985, 1988) and Pinker (1989) proposed

that the difference between Mary loaded hay onto the wagon and Mary loaded the wagon with hay is

that the former focuses on what happened to the hay and the latter, on what happened to the wagon. This

different focus leads to somewhat different construals: If all the hay is on the wagon but the wagon is

not full, the former sentence can be used, but the latter cannot be. This account provides an explanation

for why some verbs can appear in one construction but not the other (Mary filled the glass with water vs.

*Mary filled water into the glass). Subsequent studies have shown that even preschoolers are sensitive to

this constraint and generalize it to novel verbs (Ambridge, Pine & Rowland, in press; Gropen et al.,

1991). There is a similar, subtle difference in meaning of double-object datives (John threw Mary the

book) and prepositional-object datives (John threw the book to Mary) and learners also appear to be

sensitive to this constraint in picking a syntactic form (Ambridge, Pine, Rowland & Chang, in press;

Gropen et al., 1989).

1.3 Verbs of Psychological State

There is one problematic case, however, which has resisted this treatment: verbs of

psychological state (psych-verbs), which either map the EXPERIENCER to subject and the STIMULUS to

object (John feared/hated/loved Mary) or the EXPERIENCER to object and the STIMULUS to subject (Mary

frightened/angered/delighted John). Both kinds of psych-verbs are found in a wide variety of languages

(Belletti & Rizzi, 1988; Bialy, 2005; Croft, 1993, in press; Dowty, 1991; Landau, 2010; Levin, 1993;

Pesetsky, 1995; Pylkkanen, 1999), and are widely used within these languages.

Several attempts have been made to find systematic semantic distinctions between the two types,

thus explaining away the apparent difference in linking patterns, as was done for dative verbs and

locative verbs, as described in section 1.2 (Croft, 2012; Dowty, 1991; Grimshaw, 1990; Landau, 2010;

Pesetsky, 1995; Pylkkanen, 1999). For instance, Pesetsky (1995) argues that experiencer-object verbs

(frighten/anger/delight) construe events as causal, whereas experiencer-subject verbs (fear/hate/love) do

not encode cause and all. In contrast, Croft (2012) argues that both types of verbs are causal, with

experiencer-object verbs focusing on the causal role of the stimulus and experiencer-subject verbs

focusing on the causal role of the experiencer. Pylkkanen (1999) argues that the distinction is and how

verbs grammatically encode states and events (see below). Yet other researchers provide yet other

hypotheses.

The difficulty in finding a persuasive semantic distinction upon which all researchers can agree

has led some to express skepticism about the project itself. Culicover and Jackendoff (2005) write,

“There have been attempts to demonstrate a consistent semantic difference associated with these

configurations (e.g., Grimshaw 1990; Pesetsky 1995), but we find them unpersuasive when one

considers the full range of predicates in each configuration” (p. 184), and “Linking has to be specially

stipulated by either experiencer-subject verbs (regard, enjoy, like) or experiencer-object verbs (strike,

please, appeal to) or both” (p. 215) Moreover, two lines of psycholinguistic research have been used to

argue that experiencer-object verbs (frightened/angered/delighted) are exceptions to a general rule that

links experiencers to the subject position: Second-language learners appear to have particular difficulty

acquiring experiencer-object verbs relative to experiencer-subject verbs (Sato, 2003; White, et al., 1998;

Montrul, 2001), and agrammatic aphasics show worse performance on experiencer-object verbs

(Pinango, 2000; Thompson & Lee, 2009). (However, these findings are open to other interpretations; see

General Discussion). Critically, there is no existing experimental evidence that speakers perceive any

semantic distinction between these two kinds of events, or use this distinction to determine the correct

mapping for new verbs.

1.4 Overview of the Experiments

The present study reconsiders the psychological reality of one possible semantic difference

between experiencer-subject (fear-type) and experiencer-object (frighten-type) verbs. Specifically, we

teach naïve participants new psych-verbs that describe events that systematically differ in the likely

duration of the psychological state that they describe, and then we ask participants to decide how those

verbs would be used in a sentence. This manipulation is motivated by Pylkkanen’s (1999) observation

that in Finnish, situations described by experiencer-object verbs can be bound to a particular time and

place (John frightened/angered/delighted Mary yesterday in the kitchen), whereas those described by

experiencer-subject verbs cannot be (*John liked/loved/hated Mary yesterday in the kitchen).2 Rather,

the latter describe generic properties that are true over a long period of time. Interestingly, psychologists

have also made a distinction between emotions (fright/anger/delight), which are defined as brief

2 Specifically, she argues that the two classes can be distinguished by whether they encode stage-level or individual-level predicates in

the sense of Carlson (1977).

physiological states, and dispositions (love/liking/hatred), which are stable tendencies to feel a particular

way (Ekman, 1999). If participants perceive this distinction and use it to guide verb learning, then we

would expect them to systematically prefer the experiencer-subject linking pattern for long-lived states

and the experiencer-object pattern for short-lived states. In Experiments 1 and 4, this prediction is tested

in English.

Given that many linking patterns are argued to be consistent across languages (Baker, 1988;

Croft, 2012; Dowty, 1991; Marantz, 1984; Pinker, 1989) one may additionally wonder whether the

results we find in English will extend to other languages. As a first step in this direction, in Experiments

2 and 3 we investigate Japanese, which is historically unrelated to English and has very different

grammatical structure (Tsujimura, 1996). Importantly, its psych-verb system differs from that of English

in critical ways. Whereas transitive English psych-verbs are mostly experiencer-object (220 experiencer-

object vs. 44 experiencer-subject; Levin, 1993), most monomorphemic Japanese psych-verbs are

experiencer-subject (74 vs. 5 by our count). Additional morphologically-complex experiencer-object

verbs can be formed in Japanese by adding the causative –(s)ase- affix to an experiencer-subject verb:

(1) a. Taro-wa koomori-o kowagat-ta.

Taro-TOP bat-ACC fear-PAST

Taro feared bats.

b. Koomori-wa Taro-o kowagar-ase-ta.

bat-TOP Taro-ACC fear-CAUS-PAST

Bats frightened Taro.

Thus, in Japanese morphology is a highly reliable predictor of argument realization in psych-

verbs. If state duration nevertheless influences argument realization, this would provide striking

evidence that this aspect of the syntax-semantics interface is cross-linguistically robust.

2 Experiment 1: English

2.1 Method

We selected sixteen Japanese nouns that described psychological states for which there is no

verb in English. These nouns were turned into verbs, applying any necessary phonological

accommodations. Based on a description of the psychological state, participants were asked to choose

between an experiencer-subject (fear-type) or experiencer-object (frighten-type) usage of the verb:

(2) douyo: uneasiness.

a. Ken douyos the unexpected exam.

b. The unexpected exam doyous Ken.

The experiencer of the state was unambiguous: Only one argument of the verb was animate (e.g.,

Ken). Eight verbs described short-lived states (uneasiness) and were paired with short-lived STIMULI (the

unexpected exam). Eight described long-lived states (the feeling of rivalry) and were paired with long-

lived STIMULI (Harvard’s basketball team). Four additional filler sentences not involving psych-verbs

were included.

To test generality, verbs were presented in both present tense (Experiment 1a) and past tense

(Experiment 1b). As experiencer-subject verbs cannot naturally used in the progressive form in English

(*John was fearing bats), we used simple tenses only.3 The order of verbs was pseudo-randomized such

that the same condition (short-lived/long-lived) did not occur more than twice in a row. Four test forms

were created for each experiment by counterbalancing the order of stimuli (forwards/backwards) and the

order of the sentence pairs. Five English-speaking adults participated in each test form, for a total of 20

in Experiment 1a and 20 in Experiment 1b.

2.2 Results and Discussion

As Figure 2 indicates, participants were more likely to choose the experiencer-object form for 3 There appears to be a trend in colloquial English to allow such forms (cf McDonald’s “I’m loving it” campaign). This usage is marked

and appears to invoke a different meaning (compare John loves his job with John is loving his job) and thus was avoided.

short-lived events than for long-lived events, in both Experiment 1a (M=68%, SE=9% vs. M=38%,

SE=7%, d=1.4) and 1b (M=67%, SE=9% vs. M=41%, SE=9%, d=1.0).4 The main effect of state

duration was significant (F1(1,38)=60.8, p<.001; F2(1,14)=6.2, p=.03), but the main effect of tense was

not (Fs<1) nor was the interaction of tense and duration (Fs<1). Thus, English-speakers use the

semantics of psych-verbs to guide learning of new psych-verbs.

Fig. 2. Percentage of participants choosing the experiencer-object form for each verb for English verbs

(Exp. 1), monomorphemic Japanese verbs (Exp. 2), and causally-affixed Japanese verbs (Exp. 3).

3 Experiment 2: Monomorphemic Japanese Psych-Verbs

3.1 Overview

Having found evidence that the duration of the psychological state guides expectations about

syntactic form in English, we tested the same contrast in Japanese using monomorphemic verbs. As

discussed in the Introduction, nearly all monomorphemic psych-verbs in Japanese are experiencer-

4 Because generality of the effect across items is of core interest, means, standard errors and Cohen’s d are here and elsewhere calculated

by items. ANOVAs are calculated by both subjects and items.

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short long short long short long short long short longEnglish Present English Past Japanese Present Japanese Past Japanese Causal

Experiment 1 Experiment 2 Experiment 3

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subject. Thus, if Japanese participants are influenced by the distribution of forms in their language, they

should expect novel monomorphemic psych-verbs to be experiencer-object.

3.2 Method

Experiment 2 followed the same procedure as Experiment 1. We selected sixteen English nouns

describing psychological states for which there is no verb in Japanese. To turn these nouns into verbs,

we created loanwords using the semantically neutral, semi-productive verbalizer -r- (e.g., gugu-r-u: ‘to

google’) and made any necessary phonological accommodations. Again, eight states were long-lived

(greed) and eight were short-lived (jolt). An example trial is given below:

(4) guriifu (jolt): a surprise or shock, esp. of an unpleasant kind and often manifested physically

a. Sono keeji-wa sono koroshi-no genba-o joruto-t-ei-ta

That detective-TOP that murder-GEN scene-ACC jolt-V-PROG-PAST

The detective jolted the scene of the murder.

b. Sono koroshi-no genba-wa sono keeji-o joruto-t-ei-ta

That murder-GEN scene-TOP that detective-ACC jolt-V-PROG-PASS

The scene of the murder jolted the detective.

The four filler verbs (2 experiencer-subject) were existing English-derived psych-verbs formed with the

light verb -suru. All verbs were presented with progressive morphology, which was judged by native

speakers (YS & MU) as the most natural-sounding form. Experiment 2 was identical to Experiment 1 in

all other respects. Japanese-speaking adults were recruited in public spaces around Tokyo. Twenty

participated in the present-tense version (2a), and twenty in the past-tense version (2b). Two of the filler

verbs in 2a were problematic and were replaced in 2b.

3.3 Results and Discussion

Like English speakers, Japanese participants (Figure 2) were more likely to select the

experiencer-object form for the short-lived verbs than the long-lived verbs in both Experiments 2a

(M=29%, SE=3% vs. 9%, M=3%, d=2.3) and 2b (M=44%, SE=6% vs. M=27%, SE=4%, d=1.2). There

were significant main effects of state duration (F1(1,38)=28.6, p<.001; F2(1,14)=16.8, p=.002) and

tense (F1(1,38)=6.3, p=.02; F2(1,14)=21.5, p<.001), but the interaction was not significant (Fs<1).

Thus, Japanese-speakers, like English-speakers, utilize state duration when predicting the linking of

semantics to syntax for new psych-verbs. However, comparison of Experiments 1 and 2 reveals an

interesting cross-linguistic difference. As depicted in Figure 1, Japanese-speakers were across-the-board

less likely than English-speakers to choose the experiencer-object form for novel psych-verbs (M=28%,

SE=4%; M=53%, SE=7% vs.; t1(78)=5.8, p<.001; t2(30)=3.5, p=.001; d=1.2), suggesting a role for a

language-specific biases (note that Japanese has fewer monomorphemic experiencer-object verbs than

English does).

4 Experiment 3: Causative-Affixed Japanese Psych-Verbs

4.1 Overview

As noted above, while both English and Japanese speakers were significantly more likely to

choose experience-object (frighten-type) uses of novel psych-verbs when the duration of the described

mental state was short, they showed different baseline preference for the two forms. This may be due to

differences in kind of monomorphemic psych-verbs that already exist in each language and the

availability of morphological processes for building new psych-verbs. Monomorphemic psych-verbs in

Japanese are overwhelmingly experiencer-subject (fear-type); however, Japanese also has a highly

productive causative marker which, when used to form psych predicates, produces uniformly

experiencer-object (frighten-type) verbs. If the differences we observed between Experiment 1 and 2 are

due to language-specific knowledge about how morphological form relates to linking patterns, then we

should expect Japanese-speakers to prefer the experiencer-object form for affixed psych-verbs. If the

differences are due to inadvertent differences in the stimuli or a general preference for experiencer-

subject verbs on the part of Japanese-speakers, morphological structure should have no effect.

4.2 Method

The materials and procedure were identical to Experiment 2a, except that all verbs were

causativized by the addition of the -(s)ase- affix and that the (better) filler verbs from Experiment 2b

were used. Twenty Japanese-speaking adults recruited in public spaces around Tokyo participated.

4.3 Results and Discussion

Japanese-speakers showed a strong bias to choose the experiencer-object forms (M=73%,

SE=3% vs. M=19%, SE=3%), resulting in a reliable difference between Experiment 3 and Experiment

2a (t1(38)=10.3, p<.001; t2(15)=20.5, p<.001; d=4.5). Nevertheless, participants preferred the

experiencer-object form even more for the short-lived states than the long-lived states (Figure 2;

M=79%, SE=2% vs. M=67%, SE=3%; t1(19)=2.41, p=.03; t2(14)=2.83, p=.01; d=1.4) suggesting that

even in this strongly constrained morphological context, meaning played a role in preferred argument

realization patterns.

5 Experiment 4: States and Stimuli

5.1 Overview

Before discussing the above results, we address one final question about the source of the short-

lived/long-lived distinction presented above. In Experiments 1-3, we biased participants to interpret

novel verbs and short-lived or long-lived both with the definition of the psychological state (uneasiness

vs. the feeling of rivalry) and the longevity of the inanimate stimulus (the unexpected exam vs.

Harvard’s basketball team). There are two ways in which these stimuli could affect judgments. First,

short-lived and long-lived stimuli may reinforce the interpretation of the psychological states as short- or

long-lived. This was our original intention and would strengthen the above conclusions. However, it is

also possible that participants used linking-patterns that mapped particular kinds of noun-phrases to

subject or object position, entirely ignoring the verb’s meaning. In Experiment 4, conducted in English,

we test whether the psychological state definitions by themselves are sufficient to guide psych-verb

learning by using a slight variant of the task in which both the experiencer and stimulus of the

psychological state were humans.

5.2 Method

The 16 definitions of psychological states from Experiment 1 were used. A separate group of 16

English-speaking participants recruited through Amazon Mechanical Turk rated each state (in lists

counterbalanced by order) according to how long it would likely last: seconds, minutes, hours, days,

weeks, months or years. Based on these ratings, the stimuli were divided into eight short-lived and eight

long-lived states, resulting in the re-classification of two of the items.

Participants were introduced to a novel character “Susan” who has many emotional relationships

with friends. For each friend, participants were told Susan that experienced one of the 16 psychological

states. Participants were asked to produce a three-word sentence using the novel verb that described this

state and used both character’s names. All verbs were presented in the past tense. The two counter-

balanced orders from Experiment 1 were used; fillers were not included.

Forty English-speaking US residents were recruited through Amazon Mechanical Turk. An

additional 12 were excluded for failing to follow directions or for reporting dyslexia.

5.3 Results and Discussion

Once again participants were more likely to link the experiencer (Susan) with object position for

short-lived relative to long-lived states (Figure 3; M=52%, SE=6% vs. M=24%, SE=6%; t1(39)=7.20,

p<.001; t2(14)=3.25, p=.01; d=1.6). These results confirm that the perceived length of the psychological

state played a role in the choice of linking rule. While the inanimate arguments used in Experiments 1-3

may have made additional contributions, the results of Experiment 4 show that the expected duration of

the psychological state alone is sufficient to influence argument realization.

Fig. 3. Percentage of participants choosing the experiencer-object form for each verb in English (Exp.

4).

6 General Discussion

6.1 Summary of Results

To communicate about events and states, speakers must map participants onto syntactic roles

(such subject or object). To the extent that these linking patterns are generalizable, they can facilitate the

acquisition (and creation) of new verbs, and, to the extent that these generalizations are available to

infants, they can guide the acquisition of syntax (Pinker, 1984) and verb meaning (Gleitman, 1990). In

contrast, to the extent that the mappings from semantics to syntax are unpredictable or riddled with

exceptions, learners will have to acquire knowledge of these linking patterns through their encounters

with individual verbs in contexts where the relevant aspects of meaning and form are themselves

transparent (Tomasello, 1992). The primary evidence against broad linking rules comes from cases

where a single event can be described by sentences in which a given participant is mapped onto distinct

syntactic positions. In this paper, we examined one of the most widely-discussed cases of this kind:

psych-verbs, which exhibit two distinct linking-patterns, either linking the EXPERIENCER of the

psychological state to subject position and the STIMULUS of the state to object position (fear/hate/love) or

vice versa (frighten/anger/delight). Following Pylkkanen (1999), we propose that this distinction in

linking-patterns mirrors a distinction in verb semantics: experiencer-subject verbs describe long-lived

states; experiencer-object verbs describe short-lived states.

Across four experiments, we find that this distinction is psychologically real and guides the use

of novel verbs. These effects were robust, exhibiting large effect sizes (Cohen’s ds ≥ 1) across different

verb tenses and morphological forms. The effect was found in both English (Exps. 1 & 4) and Japanese

(Exps. 2-3) and was suggested by an analysis of existing Finnish verbs (Pylkkanen, 1999).

Critically, the presence of this effect in Japanese strongly suggests that it does not arise by a

simple analogy between the novel verb and known verbs. In Japanese, there are no causative

experiencer-subject verbs and few monomorphemic experiencer-object verbs. Nevertheless, when

confronted with a causative verb that described a long-lived psychological state or monomorphemic

verb describing a short-lived state, about 30% of the time our Japanese participants overrode the

language-specific morphological cues and followed the semantic generalization. The presence of this

pattern in two typologically unrelated languages raises the possibility that the pattern is cross-

linguistically robust, and perhaps even universal. Further research on the lexicalization of novel psych-

verbs in a variety is needed to explore this possibility.

These findings may seem in conflict with previous psycholinguistic studies of second-language

learners and agrammatic aphasics, which appeared to suggest that experiencer-object verbs are treated as

exceptions (Montrul, 2001; Pinango, 2000; Sato, 2003; Thompson & Lee, 2009; White, et al., 1998).

However, those results are subject to a number of caveats. It appears that acquiring experiencer-object

(frighten-type) verbs is difficult only for learners whose native language marks such verbs

morphologically (such as Japanese; see below) when studying a language in which those verbs are not

marked morphologically (like English). Studies of learners whose native language does not

morphologically mark experiencer-object verbs have not reported greater difficulty learning these verbs

in languages that do mark them morphologically (Montrul, 2001), suggesting that this effect is due to

first-language carryover (i.e., an expectation that such verbs should be marked morphologically). In the

case of aphasia, it is interesting that agrammatic aphasics are not globally worse at experiencer-object

verbs; when the verbs are presented in passive form, they do better at experiencer-object verbs than

experiencer-subject verbs. Aphasics may, therefore, employ a compensatory strategy of putting the

necessarily animate argument (the experiencer) in subject position. This would succeed for most active

verbs (which typically have animate subjects) and fail for most passive verbs, consistent with the finding

that they have particular difficulty with passives relative to actives (Grodzinsky et al., 1999). Thus, these

previous studies do not offer unambiguous evidence that one type of psych-verb is intrinsically easier to

learn or process.

In the remainder of this discussion, we examine: alternative hypotheses about the semantic

distinction that underlies these effects; how different theories of linking might account for the cross-

linguistic similarities and differences revealed in these studies; and the implications of these results for

theories of language acquisition.

6.2 Causes, Stages and Emotions

The above experiments demonstrate that short-lived emotions are more likely to be expressed

with experiencer-object verbs. There are three ways in which event duration could influence linking-

patterns:

First, the duration of the emotion could be directly encoded in the linking-patterns. While this

proposal provides a simple explanation of our data, we know of no other cases in the literature in which

temporal duration of the state described by a verb is directly associated with different linking-patterns.

Second, the duration of an emotion could influence whether the sentence is interpreted as

encoding an unchanging state or an event where an entity shifts from one state to another (a change-of-

state event). On some accounts (e.g., Tenny, 1994), change-of-state verbs are distinguished by having

one argument which “measures out” the event. In a transitive sentence, this participant always surfaces

as the direct object: In Mary broke/cleaned/opened the box, “the box” must be the direct object because

it is the box’s state – not Mary’s state – which determines whether any breaking, cleaning or opening

has been done. Because short-lived psychological states come and go by definition, they may be more

likely to be conceived as change-of-state verbs. On Tenny’s (1994) account, when a change of state

involves an emotion, the experiencer measures out the event and surfaces as the direct object

(frighten/anger/delight). In contrast, longer-lived psychological states (fear/hate/love) may be more

readily conceived of as stable states; no event is measured out and the experiencer-object pattern is not

required. Why the experiencer-subject form is preferred for these verbs must be explained through some

other mechanism (e.g., a preference to link animate agents with subject position; Dowty, 1991).

Third, the duration of an emotion could influence whether it is conceived of as having an

external cause. Several researchers (Grimshaw, 1990; Pesetsky, 1995; Talmy, 1985; Pylkkanen, 1999)

have argued that experiencer-object verbs explicitly mark the STIMULUS argument as the cause of the

psychological state. Similarly, at least several languages that employ causal morphemes (like Finnish

and Japanese) often use them to construct experiencer-object verbs (cf Pesetsky, 1995). Causes are

robustly linked with subject position across languages (Baker, 1988; Pinker, 1984; Levin & Rappaport

Hovav, 2005), which would account for linking-pattern of these verbs. In contrast, on this theory

experiencer-subject verbs do not express the cause but simply assert that the experiencer is having an

emotional state with a particular target or content, thus a default linking rule linking animate entities to

subject position may apply. This proposal is supported by the fact that in languages with causally-

affixed psych-verbs (like Japanese), these verbs are experiencer-object.

Thus, people may prefer to encode short-lived psychological states as experiencer-object verbs

because they wish to talk about the change of state (and thus link experiencer to object position), they

wish to talk about the cause of the state (and thus map the stimulus onto subject position), or both. In

either case the semantic distinction underlying these effects is one relevant to a broad range of

predicates.

6.3 Variation within and between languages

Although speakers of both languages were sensitive to psychological state duration, English-

speakers were far more likely than Japanese-speakers to choose the experiencer-object form for

monomorphemic verbs. This effect is large and consistent across items (d=1.2), suggesting that small,

accidental variations in items are not to blame. All but one of the short-lived English verbs in

Experiment 1a had more experiencer-object attributions than any of the short-lived Japanese verbs in

Experiment 2a and all but one of the long-lived English verbs in 1a had more experiencer-object

attributions than any of the long-lived Japanese verbs in 2a.

We suspect that this pattern reflects the difference in the morphological structure of psych-verbs

in these languages. As noted earlier, in Japanese most monomorphemic psych-verbs have experiencer

subjects, while experiencer-object verbs are created from experiencer-subject verbs by applying the –

(s)ase affix. Our participants clearly knew this and applied this knowledge in our task: verbs with the

causative affix were expressed with experiencer-objects twice as often as monomorphemic verbs.

It may be that when Japanese speakers encounter a causally-affixed verb, they infer that it

encodes a caused change-of-state, even if the event is fairly long in duration, resulting in semantics

appropriate for an experiencer-object verb. In contrast, when they encounter a monomorphemic verb,

they infer that it does not describe a caused change-of-state (or else it would have the causative

morpheme), resulting in semantics appropriate for an experiencer-subject verb. Because English does

not explicitly mark verbs as causal or not, the English-speaking participants were more open to both

possible interpretations of the novel verb. This hypothesis would account for cross-lingustic variation

while remaining consistent with a cross-linguistically universal linking bias (for a parallel account of

cross-linguistic differences in object construal, see Barner et al., 2010; Li et al., 2009).

Alternatively, it is possible that English speakers and Japanese speakers conceived of the verbs

in the preceding experiments in the same way, and shared a bias to encode long-lived states as

experiencer-subject verbs, but these cross-linguistic linking patterns had been modified by differences in

their linguistic experience. Japanese-speakers may have learned that monomorphemic psych-verbs are

likely to have EXPERIENCER subjects (regardless of whether they encode a change-of-state), while psych-

verbs with the causative morpheme typically have EXPERIENCER objects. English-speakers have a less

pronounced bias because existing English psych-verbs – all of which are monomorphemic5 – contain

substantial numbers of both experiencer-subject and experiencer-object verbs (see recent work on

implementing overhypotheses – hypotheses about hypotheses – in hierarchical Bayesian models; e.g.,

Perfors et al., 2010).

While this final proposal gets the direction of results across experiments correct, one would have

predicted that English participants would show an overall bias towards the experiencer-object form,

given that that form comprises the majority of English psych-verbs. Instead, English-speaking

participants chose the experiencer-object form 54% of the time in Experiment 1 and 38% of the time in

Experiment 4. This could be evidence against the above proposal. Alternatively, it may be (a) due to the

choice of stimuli (the long-lived stimuli made better exemplars of experiencer-subject verbs than the 5 Historically, English had several causally-affixed psych-verbs. Frighten is historically derived from the adjective frighten and a semi-

productive causal morpheme –en. In contemporary English, such verbs are exceedingly rare, and –en is at best minimally productive, suggesting that this plays little role in modern linguistic intuitions.

short-lived stimuli made experiencer-object verbs), or; (b) due to some additional bias, such as a bias to

put necessarily-animate arguments in subject position (see Paczynski & Kuperberg, 2011, for a review).

6.4 Cross-Linguistic Consistency and Acquisition of the Linking Rules

Because our participants were linguistically competent adults, our experiments do not provide

direct evidence about the origins of these syntactic expectations. Below we consider how this bias might

arise during acquisition.

First, this bias may reflect innate linking patterns. Second, it may be that children come to the

problem of verb-learning with broad semantic categories of verbs/events (e.g., short-lived, caused

changes of emotional state) already in place, and only the linking patterns must be learned (for related

discussion, see Levin, 1993; Pinker, 1984, 1989). Finally, it may be that both semantic categories and

linking patterns arise as generalizations during language acquisition (Bowerman, 1990; Goldberg, 1995;

Tomasello, 1992, 2003).

These three accounts interact with the partially orthogonal issue of cross-linguistic stability. The

pattern we describe above was seen in English and Japanese and inspired by previous work in Finnish

(Pylkkanen, 1999). This is predicted – and, in fact, required – by the first account (innate linking

patterns); neither of the latter two accounts directly predict this result, at least not by themselves.

What additional considerations could lead the pattern to be consistent across English, Japanese,

and Finnish? One possibility is simple chance, though given the historical distance between the three

languages, this seems unlikely. Nonetheless, it should be tested by investigating additional languages. A

second possibility is that that certain cognitive constructs are more salient than others (e.g., causes), and

certain syntactic positions are more prominent than others (e.g., subjects), and there is a preference to

map salient cognitive constructs onto prominent syntactic positions. This could lead to the pattern

observed without requiring that either semantic roles or syntactic positions are innate (i.e., consistent

with accounts 2-3, above). Finally, it may be that many or all languages share the same structure because

of communicative constraints. That is, languages that map short-lived psychological states onto

experiencer-object verbs are more efficient at communication (cf Chater & Christiansen, 2010). The

challenge for this proposal is to show that such languages truly are superior under some defensible

definition of “efficiency”.

7 Conclusions

Some verbs can be used to describe the same event but undergo different linking patterns

(fear/frighten, send/receive, chase/flee). These cases present problems for theories on which linking

patterns are highly systematic. Previous work on the dative alternation (John gave Mary a book vs. John

gave a book to Mary) and the locative alternation (Mary loaded the wagon with hay vs. Mary loaded hay

onto the wagon) has suggested that variation in syntactic encoding reflects fine-grained differences in

semantics: The different forms encode subtly different semantic construals of the event, each of which is

mapped to syntax using a consistent set of linking rules (Ambridge, Pine & Rowland, in press;

Ambridge, Pine, Rowland & Chang, in press; Gropen et al., 1991; Gropen et al., 1989).6

In the present study, we show that the finer-grained semantics approach can also account for psych-

verbs, a particularly intractable test case which some have argued would require lexically encoded

exceptions and/or conflicting mapping rules (e.g., Belletti & Rizzi, 1986; Bowerman, 1990; Culicover &

Jackendoff, 2005). The present results suggest that the relationship between semantics and syntax may

be even more systematic than it appears to be, both within and across languages. This transparency is

theoretically critical. The hypothesis that there is a broad and consistent mapping between meaning and

form has generally been associated with generative grammar and theories of acquisition which posit

extensive innate domain-specific machinery (e.g., Baker, 1988; Pinker, 1984). However, consistency in

this mapping would be advantageous to the learner from a variety of theoretical perspectives; to the

degree that syntactic form can be derived from our conceptual representation of events, the burden on

6 Ambridge and colleagues endorse a somewhat weaker position where the mapping is mostly consistent, but other factors play a role.

syntactic development (and syntactic evolution) is decreased.

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