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Carretero García, Paloma: Dative Arguments in Psychological Predicates in Spanish

This paper explores the behaviour of dative arguments in the context of psychological predicates in Spanish. We focus on predicates that require a dative experiencer and a nominative stimulus. These constructions have an obligatory dative weak pronoun but also optionally allow a doubled dative NP. We are concerned with what the status of the dative is and why the unmarked order of the sentence is DAT NP + V + DAT PRN + NOM NP. We firstly examine the possibility that the dative NP is the subject but will argue through testing that the NOM NP is SUBJ. We will then propose to treat the dative argument as OBJth. Finally we claim that the unexpected order stems from a mismatch between thematic and functional hierarchies and will analyse the position of the DAT NP as WEAK FOCUS, whose properties will be described in depth in the last sections of the paper.


December 22, 2022
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