Phy-inside-psych adjectives
Isabelle Haïk
January 2021 

Some mental states go in pairs with certain physical states. Grammatically, certain Object-Experiencer psych constructions are formed on a regular pattern across languages, that of a psychological predicate or phrase having a physical predicate as a “root” and not a psych one. Those constructions can be words, like some Ving and Vant adjectives in English and French, and they can be phrasal, like the desiderative construction in Finnish or the FEEL LIKE construction in Albanian among others. Here, we study the adjectives, such as marrant ‘funny,’ jaw-dropping and even the effing-class. They have a [ [ Vphy ] ing ]psychA (phy-inside-psych) form, which literally means ‘which causes the physical effect usually triggered by the emotion/sensation that it causes,’ and actually mean ‘which causes that emotion/sensation,’ an Object-Experiencer psych meaning.

Format:	[ pdf ]
Reference:	lingbuzz/005670 (please use that when you cite this article)
Published in:	Corela 18,2
keywords:	phy-inside-psych, adjectives, psych verbs, mental causes, slang, exclamations, delocution, syntax, semantics, morphology
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