An investigation on the acquisition of psych predicates argument structure

Abstract

I this paper, we present the results of a research on the acquisition of psych verbs, in which participated thirty 4-7 year old children and thirty 9-10 year old children. The aim is to investigate the mapping problem of psych verbs – the possibility to map the thematic roles with verbs of reversible meaning such as fear and frighten into different syntactic positions. We intend to demonstrate that the mapping problem of psych verbs has implications to language acquisition process and that psych verbs are harder to acquire then action verbs. We also assume an innate predisposition to the linking of arguments to syntactic positions based on a hierarchy of semantic features, and we defend that the thematic role of Experiencer is preferred to the subject position, if compared to the Theme, a thematic role that expresses less volition, intentionality and agency.