Different forms, common mechanisms: diathesis alternation in a group of Russian mental verbs
The paper focuses on a group of Russian verbs occurring in the fol- lowing valency frames: with two objects ( Петя осуждал Васю за его поступок, lit. ‘Petya condemned Vasya for his conduct') and with one object ( Петя осуждал поступок Васи, lit. ‘Petya condemned Vasya's conduct'), so that the participant expressed in the position of the secon- dary object in the former valency frame is expressed as the primary object in the latter valency frame. This group comprises many verbs of ap- proval/ disapproval ( хвалить ‘praise', etc.), verbs of anger ( сердиться ‘be anger', etc.), and many other verbs, e.g., поощрять ‘encourage', со- гласиться ‘agree', подражать ‘imitate', сочувствовать ‘sympathise'. We claim that the common grammatical behaviour of these variegated verbs can be accounted for by their common semantic properties. 1) All the verbs that were found to manifest the alternation in question have the semantic component of evaluation on the part of the subject participant.2) These verbs denote reactions of the subject participant triggered by an external situation. 3) There is a human participant who is considered re- sponsible for this situation and who is the main goal of the reaction.