The inhumane accusative: an empirical investigation
نویسندگان
چکیده
Leo Weisgerber (1957/58) made the much debated claim that in German referring to human beings via a direct (accusative) object where an indirect (dative) object paraphrase would be available is an inhumane choice, since it entails subtly depersonalizing the referent: Dative use implies ascribing human characteristics to referents, accusative use amounts to degrading them to mere objects. Assuming that agentivity and mental experience in action are salient human characteristics, Weisgerber’s claim fits nicelly with the dative and accusative object prototypes proposed by Langacker (1991): A dative object suggests an active experiencer, an accusative object an inanimate thing. In his cognitive model of German cases, Smith (1985) observed also a difference in action participation between these personal objects. We used a priming experiment to test the hypothesis that persons introduced via dative as opposed to accusative objects are more readily perceived as highly agentive and mentally involved.
منابع مشابه
INVESTIGATING THE ROLE OF CAUSATIVIZATION IN OVERPASSIVIZATION OF UN-ACCUSATIVE VERBS BY IRANIAN ENGLISH MAJORS
The current study aims at exploring the role of causativization as one of the causes stated in the literature for overpassivization of English unaccusatives in an Iranian context.The study was conducted using three data collection procedures, an Oxford Placement Test, a Grammaticality Judgment Task, and a Production Task. The results revealed that causativization errors with non-alternating una...
متن کاملImpersonal Russian Sentences with the Subject in the Accusative Case and the Meaning of a Person\'s Physical Condition in the Terms of Persian Language
In this article, considering impersonal sentences with the subject in the accusative case, which conveys the physical state of a living being, an attempt is made to compare them with the Persian correlates. This type of impersonal sentences can cause different problems for the Persian-speaking students due to their grammatical specificity (e.g. the uses of the subject in the accusative, rather ...
متن کاملCase and reanalysis.
In this paper we discuss an asymmetry in the Case system of German and its implications for human sentence processing: the asymmetry between nominative/accusative and dative case. Starting from the assumption that dative case has a distinct grammatical representation--dative DPs are embedded into an extra structural layer KP--the results of two experiments will be presented, which show that dat...
متن کاملDemand for Medical Care in Urban Areas of Iran : An Empirical Investigation
The purpose of this paper is to empirically investigate the factors affecting demand for medical care in Iran the population for this study relates to the Medical Care Insurance Organization of Iran. For the sake of conducting the analysis a sample of 4260 individuals are chosen using a fuzzy sampling procedure. The data was then analyzed using a multinomial logit model. The results show that p...
متن کاملStructural Case Assignment In
Case, it is not licensed due to the Case Filter under the GB framework. Thus BG intends to capture the relation between the accusative Case assignment and the -role assignment. In terms of the conceptual perspective, BG has been criticized for damaging the modular organization of the grammar (see McFadden 2004, Reuland (2000) for more discussions). For example, Haider (2000:33) points out that...
متن کامل