Passives from Experiencer verbs

[Daniel Everett]

On Monday, Dec 8, 2003, at 05:26 Europe/London, Suzanne Kemmer wrote:

> There is an established construction {see/feel/find} + REFL  +
> participle
> , with two subconstructions  containing present participle and past
> participle.
>
> The most frequent collocates of reflexive pronouns in English are
> exactly
> those three verbs, which almost always have following participles when
> occurring
> with reflexives. (Michael Barlow wrote
> about this in an analysis of English reflexives, but I can't remember
> where.)
> The passive meaning Alan noticed basically comes from the past
> participle. The
> V + REFL part is essentially a  quasi-paraphrase
> of 'be' but with subject reflecting on the experience stated in
> the complement.
>

These are interesting constructions, but I suspect that 'found' ,'see'
,and the other pre-participial verbs are more than 'quasi-paraphrases
of "be"'. They are clearly not quite in possession of their meanings as
main verbs, but perhaps their meanings can still be distinguished by
some tests, i.e. as a family of closely related, but not identical,
construction-based meanings.

So, I wouldn't say "I saw myself elected to the ethics committee',
unless I actually witnessed the process. I would use 'found myself',
though, perhaps because this reflects my position separate from the
committee, physically or mentally, in some way.  And if someone were,
say, on the horrible show "Weakest Link" and were eliminated in the
last round, I don't she would say "I find myself eliminated", though
she might use this reporting later to someone else.

I am not saying, of course, that Suzanne is claiming that it is not
possible to distinguish the pre-participial verbs, but I am suggesting
that (i) she may be right wrt the template of the construction but that
(ii) interesting sub-constructions might be discovered based on these
verbs' contributions.


-- Dan


------------------------------------------

Daniel L. Everett
Professor of Phonology
Postgraduate Programme Director
Postgraduate Admissions Officer
Department of Linguistics
The University of Manchester
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http://ling.man.ac.uk/info/staff/de
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