Towards ontology of states: Experiencer verbs in Bulgarian

Abstract

The internal structure of the situations described by verbs or verbal phrases determines the lexical aspect (or Aktionsart) of the particular predicate. The main topic of our study is the syntactic structure of verbal predicates denoting perceptions, emotions, and mental states, e.g. гледам (see), чувам (hear); обичам (love), обожавам (adore), радвам се (be happy/glad), безпокоя се (worry), плаша се (be afraid/scared); желая (desire), вярвам (believe). The objectives of our study are to propose a syntactic model of state predicates represented by verbs of perception, emotions, and mental states and to determine the number, type, and semantics of their arguments (subject, direct, and indirect objects). Our aim is also to test the hypothesis of dependence between lexical semantics and syntactic realizations of state predicates.