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This article offers a descriptive account of body part constructions in Old East Frisian texts and analyzes the occurrence of dative experiencers in such clauses. This includes a comparison between Old Frisian body part grammar and its Middle Dutch counterpart, revisiting issues such as the antiquity of dative external possessors and oblique subject constructions in West Germanic. In presenting the data from a theory-neutral perspective, this investigation contributes to the study of body part grammar in Medieval Germanic in particular and to the growing body of literature on Old Frisian syntax in general.

This paper presents an analysis of Dative Experiencer verbs in Spanish and Polish as compared to English within a parametric variation approach that groups languages into agreement-prominent and discourse-configurational ones. Based on a data elicitation experiment, we account for the surface word orderings of sentences with Dative Experiencers in terms of the feature inheritance theory. Assuming discourse features such as [Top] or [Foc], we argue that English and Polish move Experiencers to TP if they are not discourse-wise marked; otherwise, they move to CP. Spanish may move DEs to TP for both reasons: agreement and discourse.

The goal of this work is to provide an account of dative clitic dependencies in constructions with raising verbs such as to seem in Romanian. Dative clitic experiencers as quirky subjects and dative clitics in clitic left dislocation (CLLD) constructions are discussed from a syntactic point of view and experimentally tested in a psycholinguistics study. The study contributes to current innovations in the Minimalist Program, presenting new perspectives on Romanian clitic dependencies in raising constructions partially addressed in earlier generative grammar. This study poses new questions regarding raising, the intervention effects of dative clitic experiencers, and the effects of clitic dependencies in ditransitive constructions. Chapter II presents an overview of Romanian raising constructions without dative experiencers. I show that Romanian possesses three raising constructions, based on the type of the embedded clause: subjunctive, infinitive, and indicative. Each of these has three potential locations for the nominative subject, argued to be generated in the embedded clause. Formal mechanisms such as Long Distance and Multiple Agree, Movement, Case and EPP are considered independent of one another. Dative clitic experiencers in raising constructions, analyzed in Chapter III, are claimed to be quirky subjects and to structurally occupy the highest position in the sentence. Having established the role of dative clitic experiencers, I discuss raising constructions involving dative experiencers generated and/or surfacing in various positions, and their effects on operations such as Agree and Move. I then discuss Experiencer Islands, formed by matrix and embedded experiencers in the same utterance, and present the contexts in which they occur. A Grammaticality Judgment Test confirms the existence of such restriction in Romanian. Furthermore, I present an analysis of Experiencer Islands and discuss observed exceptions to the restriction. Dative clitic dependencies such as CLLD constructions and Long Distance CLLD Constructions are also analyzed in this thesis. The experimental study presented in Chapter IV supports theoretical claims and demonstrates that Romanian speakers are aware of dative clitic dependencies, such as clitic experiencer dependencies and clitic dependencies in CLLD constructions, possess the grammatical knowledge of biclausal constructions involving dative clitic dependencies and have the ability to recognize such dependencies.

Dative experiencer predicates in Hungarian investigates the argument structure and the syntax of appeal to- and important-type predicates in Hungarian. Couched in terms of Reinhart’s (2000, 2002) Theta System, the thesis presents arguments for the need to resort to the lexicon in setting up systematic generalizations concerning the licensing and the basic syntactic behavior of dative experiencers. Dative experiencer predicates are distinct both conceptually and thematically from subject- and object-experiencers, and the three classes of predicates cannot be collapsed at any level of representation. Dative experiencers themselves can be of three distinct grammatical types. Appeal to-type predicates have dative experiencer arguments, but important-type predicates license dative thematic adjuncts, which are optional and which have distinctive semantic, morphological, and syntactic properties. A general account of thematic adjuncts is developed. Non-thematic datives are distinguished as a third type of dative experiencers. These can freely be inserted into any clause as regular adjuncts. A fresh look is taken from this perspective at the syntax of dative experiencer constructions in Hungarian. Hungarian dative experiencer predicates are shown to be non-quirky. Their peculiar syntactic behavior is the consequence of their special thematic properties. In addition, the argument - thematic adjunct distinction helps the author to reconsider the role dative phrases play in agreement-marked infinitival constructions in Hungarian. This thesis is of relevance to scholars working on experiencer predicates, dative case, and quirky subjects in particular; and to scholars interested in argument structure, lexicalist theories, and the argument - adjunct distinction in general.

Dative experiencer predicates in Hungarian investigates the argument structure and the syntax of appeal to- and important-type predicates in Hungarian. Couched in terms of Reinhart’s (2000, 2002) Theta System, the thesis presents arguments for the need to resort to the lexicon in setting up systematic generalizations concerning the licensing and the basic syntactic behavior of dative experiencers. Dative experiencer predicates are distinct both conceptually and thematically from subject- and object-experiencers, and the three classes of predicates cannot be collapsed at any level of representation. Dative experiencers themselves can be of three distinct grammatical types. Appeal to-type predicates have dative experiencer arguments, but important-type predicates license dative thematic adjuncts, which are optional and which have distinctive semantic, morphological, and syntactic properties. A general account of thematic adjuncts is developed. Non-thematic datives are distinguished as a third type of dative experiencers. These can freely be inserted into any clause as regular adjuncts. A fresh look is taken from this perspective at the syntax of dative experiencer constructions in Hungarian. Hungarian dative experiencer predicates are shown to be non-quirky. Their peculiar syntactic behavior is the consequence of their special thematic properties. In addition, the argument - thematic adjunct distinction helps the author to reconsider the role dative phrases play in agreement-marked infinitival constructions in Hungarian. This thesis is of relevance to scholars working on experiencer predicates, dative case, and quirky subjects in particular; and to scholars interested in argument structure, lexicalist theories, and the argument - adjunct distinction in general.

Constructions involving a dative experiencer and the reflexive form of an activity verb, are fairly common in Croatian. However, in most grammars of Croatian such constructions are often neglected or written off as being impersonal or having what is usually called a logical subject. We shall try to prove that Role and Reference Grammar provides satisfactory means of explaining that such constructions are not impersonal, but involve a particular type of internal experience predicates with dative experiencers as undergoers.