Experiencer-object verbs are psychological predicates that realise
their stimulus argument as their subject in the canonical transitive pattern.
In some sentences though, a part of the semantic stimulus is expressed
by a phrase external to the subject, often a PP. Such cases have
been referred to as ‘split stimuli’ in the literature. We present an explorative
corpus-based investigation of split stimuli in German and show that
they are quite frequent, that the number of prepositions licensing such
readings is surprisingly large, that the PPs involved in them are adjuncts
(they are optional and there may be more than one of them), and that
verbs differ largely with respect to the number of split stimulus examples
with different prepositions. A further semantic annotation study of the
subjects of the sentences and the internal arguments of the prepositions
suggests that it is unnecessary to postulate the existence of specific ‘split
stimulus’ readings of the prepositions, but that the ‘split’ effect arises
from an interplay of the semantics of the verbs and well-known interpretations
of the prepositions.