The relationship between verb meaning and argument realization: What we learn from the processing of agent-implying intransitive verbs in Japanese.

ABSTRACT: This study investigated whether some Japanese intransitive verbs, called agent-implying intransitive verbs, are processed differently from other ordinary intransitive verbs. These verbs are special in that they denote agentive events, but they are intransitive verbs, which only allow the patient/theme to be the only nominatively marked argument. The priming experiment was designed based on the situation model theory, assuming that verbs with an agentive semantic structure (e.g., ordinary transitive verbs) has a shorter causal inferential distance than those with a non-agentive semantic structure (e.g., ordinary intransitive verb). In the experiment, participants were instructed to read two sentences that formed a story, of which the second sentence was either a transitive or intransitive s

SUBMITTER: Luk ZP 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9377394 | biostudies-literature | 2022

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature