Abstract

MELIS, Chantal. THE CAUSATIVE EXPERIENCER VERBS OF SPANISH. AN ASPECTUAL ANALYSIS. Anu. let. lingüíst. filol. [online]. 2019, vol.7, n.1, pp.105-156.  Epub Dec 06, 2021. ISSN 2448-8224.  https://doi.org/10.19130/iifl.adel.7.1.2019.1531.

The present work investigates the aspectual structure of the so-called emotional causatives of Spanish, such as asustar ‘frighten’, inquietar ‘trouble’ or molestar ‘bother’. I defend the hypothesis that, in the transitive variant as well as in the reflexive construction (se), these verbs exhibit the behavior of ‘composite achievements’ (Fernández Lagunilla y De Miguel,por lo 1999, 2000). My demonstration involves a variety of aspectual proofs, which I apply to corpus data. Crucial to the hypothesis is the recognition that the notion of cause has to be separated from the eventive properties of verbs, as argued in recent publications, and as an inquiry into the stative uses of the emotional causatives will confirm.

Keywords : composite achievement; emotional causatives; lexical aspect; reflexive construction; Spanish.