The argument structure of psych-verbs: A quantitative corpus study on cognitive entrenchment

Psych-verbs exhibit a fairly large variation in argument structure patterns, as the following examples from German show. Many of these verbs allow alternations between stimuli and experiencers in subject position (1a vs. 1b), between nominal and clausal realizations of arguments (1a vs. 1c, 1b vs. 1d), between inanimate and agent-like animate stimuli (1a vs. 1e), between simple stimuli and “split-stimuli” that are spread out over two constituents, a subject NP and a PP (1a vs. 1f), and between explicit and implicit argument realization (1b vs. 1g).