Alternating argument constructions of Dutch psychological verbs. A theory-driven corpus investigation

This article presents the results of a corpus study of the Dutch psychological verbs ergeren ‘to annoy’, interesseren ‘to interest’, storen ‘to disturb’, and verbazen ‘to amaze’. These verbs exhibit a syntactic alternation between their seemingly synonymous transitive and reflexive argument constructions, as in Elizabeth ergert John vs. John ergert zich aan Elizabeth (both: ‘Elizabeth annoys John’). On the basis of current theoretical insights, four hypotheses are formulated predicting the language user’s preferred argument construction. It is argued that the popular agentivity hypothesis, as proposed in studies by, for instance, Dowty, Langacker, and Zaenen, should be broken up into the token- and type-level agentivity hypotheses. Both agentivity hypotheses come with different theoretical entailments, and make distinct predictions about the quantitative data. These data confirm the token-level agentivity hypothesis, while not doing the same for the type-level agentivity hypothesis. Additionally, it is found that stimuli and experiencers that are heavier in terms of informational weight both prompt the use of the reflexive construction, and that the individual preferences of the verbs could not be predicted based on their historical semantic development.