Lisa Figura

Studium:

• seit 10/2020: Promotion an der Universität Hamburg (Romanistische Linguistik)
• 09/2017: Master of Arts: Romanistische Linguistik (mit Schwerpunkt „Struktur der romanischen Sprachen“), Universität Hamburg. Titel der Masterarbeit: „Clitic Doubling als Schnittstellenphänomen: Eine Untersuchung zu spanisch-deutsch-bilingualen Sprechern“
• 07/2015, 07/2016: Stipendiatin der Summer School „Rumänische Sprache, Kultur und Tradition“, Universitatea din București, Bukarest
• 08/2013: Bachelor of Arts: Romanische Philologie (Französisch, Spanisch), Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster. Titel der Bachelorarbeit: „Die Verwendung der Diminutivsuffixe im alicantinischen Jugendspanisch“

Akademische Tätigkeit

• seit 10/2020: Wissenschaftliche Mitarbeiterin und Lehrende am Institut für Romanistik der Universität Hamburg (Ib-Seminare: „Grundzüge der Semantik” , „Grundzüge der Morphologie“)
• 01/2018 - 03/2020: Wissenschaftliche Mitarbeiterin am Institut für Technische Bildung und Hochschuldidaktik der Technischen Universität Hamburg (BMBF-Projekt „BRIDGING“ und „JOIN“)
• 10/2014 - 12/2017: Studentische Hilfskraft am Institut für Romanistik der Universität Hamburg (DFG-Einzelprojekt „Clitic Doubling Across Romance“ von Prof. Susann Fischer, Prof. Esther Rinke)

Dative Experiencer Psych Verbs in (Old) French
Betreuerin: Prof. Dr. Susann Fischer (University of Hamburg)

Psych Verbs (PV) are verbs that express mental or emotional concepts and have an argument bearing the theta role Experiencer. PV represent a phenomenon that has been discussed for decades (cf. Hirsch 2018 for an overview) as they are a heterogeneous verb class with an unstable argument structure and different syntactic constructions. There are large differences within the (Romance) languages, synchronically as well as diachronically. According to Belletti/Rizzi (1988), the Dative Experiencer Psych Verbs (Dat.Exp.PV) form one of three classes of PV. This class is characterised by the fact that the dative objects can occupy a preverbal position. This non-canonical use is possible in Latin and some Romance Languages, e.g. in Spanish, as in (1):

(1)       A Ana                   le                gusta                el chocolate.    

DAT.EXP              CL.DAT     like.3SG            the chocolate

“Anna likes chocolate.“

 In Old French, the preverbal Dat.Exp can also be found (cf. Mathieu 2006: 2), as in (2):

 (2)      Et           bien set                qu’             a sa mere plest    que […]

And       well know.3SG  that           DAT.EXP    like.3SG   that

“And she knows well that it is her mother's will that […]”

 In Modern French, this structure is ungrammatical: the Dat.Exp can occupy the preverbal position only by topicalisation or dislocation with doubling (cf. Fischer 2019), as in (3):

(3)       A Marie,              la musique classique  lui                               plaît.

DAT.EXP              the music   classic        PRN.DAT                   like.3SG

“Marie likes classic music.“

 In Old French, however, the non-canonical use of Dat.Exp.PV is common (cf. Mathieu 2006), which raises the question why it has disappeared.

My dissertation opens a new perspective in the debate on Dat.Exp.PV linking language change to principles of language acquisition. My hypothesis is twofold, assuming two parallel developments of Dat.Exp.PV that together lead to its gradual loss – with a few exceptions where the Experiencer is grammaticalised in object position. The first part of my hypothesis is based on markedness in terms of structural complexity: it is assumed that the structure of Dat.Exp.PV is more complex than non-PV verb classes and not acquired easily. The second part of my hypothesis is based on computational efficiency and the assumption that during first language acquisition, rules and exceptions are organised to optimise linguistic processing. Assuming the Tolerance Principle (cf. Yang 2016), a tool from language acquisition research, it is argued that positioning Dat.Exp preverbally has not been acquired as a productive rule due to the amount of exceptions to this rule.

On the one hand, it is argued that the Old French PV did not undergo the expected developments towards intransitivity and stativity, which are generally considered to be the properties of less marked argument and event structures (cf. Van Gelderen 2014, 2019; Batllori et al. 2019). Preverbal Dat.Exp can be regarded as a marked input because of the irregular theta-role mapping (cf. Scontras et al. 2015). Language acquisition research shows that marked options are acquired later (cf. Roberts 2007, among others) and Schmitz (2006) argues that dative case is more difficult to be acquired than other cases. On the other hand, I will show that the fixation of French word order from OV to VO during the 12th century led to a low frequency of Dat.Exp in subject position. The Old French two case system might have favoured this: the ancient language system, resembling the one of ergative languages, marks the subject morphologically. From a typological point of view, it is oriented towards the object because accusative object is morphologically unmarked (cf. Bauer 2000). I will argue that these circumstances are the reason why Dat.Exp grammaticalised in object position. This process will be explained by referring to the Tolerance Principle which has already been applied to Middle English PV and their argument structure (cf. Trips/Rainsford 2022). I will suggest that Old French language learners could not maintain a productive rule which provided a preverbal and a postverbal position for Dat.Exp. Since preverbal Dat.Exp were not as frequent in the PLD as postverbal Dat.Exp, the learners hypothesised as the productive rule for Dat.Exp only the postverbal position.

These hypotheses will be tested by examining two Old French corpora (MCVF-PPCHF and the Nouveau Corpus d’Amsterdam). Frequencies of both preverbal and postverbal Dat.Exp will be gathered and their argument and event structure will be analysed.

Vorträge

• (2025) „Diachronic Paths of the Dative Experiencer“ mit Jorge Vega Vilanova, XXIV Congreso de la Asosiación Alemana de Hispanistas. Dinámicas de transferencias e hibridación. Universität Hamburg, 11.-15.3.2025.
• (2023) „Intergenerational transmission of an endangered language: The case of Bulgarian Judeo-Spanish“ mit Jorge Vega Vilanova, 8th Bucharest Colloquium of Language Acquisition, Universität Bukarest, 16.-18.11.2023.
• (2023) „Dative Experiencer Psych Verbs in Old French – A New Method for an Old Language“, Workshop on Psych Predicates in Romance Languages, HHU Düsseldorf, 20.-22.9.2023.
• (2023) „Dative Experiencer Psych Verbs in Old French“, International Conference on Historical Linguistics (ICHL26), Universität Heidelberg, 4.-8.9.2023.
• (2023) „Dative Experiencer Psych Verbs in Old French“, 8th Naxos Summer School on Diachronic Linguistics, Naxos (Griechenland), 22.-29.7.23.
• (2023) „Dative Experiencer Psych Verbs in Old French – Data and Method“, Kolloquium am Institut für Linguistik/Romanistik, Universität Stuttgart, 21.6.2023.
• (2023) „Les verbes psychologiques avec un expérimenteur au datif en Ancien Français“, Colloque de la Société Internationale de Diachronie du Français (SIDF), München, 22.-24.3.2023.
• (2022) „Psychische Verben mit Dativ-Experiencer im (Alt)Französischen“, LIMES-Kolloquium 2022, online, 30.-31.3.2022.
• (2017) „Clitic Doubling als Schnittstellenphänomen. Eine Untersuchung zu spanisch-deutsch-bilingualen Sprechern”, XXXV. Romanistentag, Zürich, 7.-12.10.2017
• (2017) „Traces of Sephardic Bucharest“, 6. Sephardische Sommerschule, Halberstadt, 26.8.-2.9.2017.

Publikationen

• Accepted. “Intergenerational Transmission of an Endangered Heritage Language: The Case of Bulgarian Judeo-Spanish” In Veronica Tomescu & Anca Sevcenco (eds.): Language Acquisition at the Syntax-Discourse and Semantic-Pragmatics Interfaces by Monolingual, Bilingual and Heritage Language Speakers. Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
• Accepted. “Dative Experiencer psych verbs in Old French – the role of the preposition à”. In Elga Cremades Cortiella & Rolf Kailuweit & Niklas Wiskandt (eds.): Psych Predicates in Romance languages. Venice: Ca’Foscari University Press.
• (2020) „Strategische Ansätze der Bundesländer zur Digitalisierung in der Hochschulbildung.“ Mit Christiane Arndt. Hamburg: TUHH Universitätsbibliothek. doi: 10.15480/882.2060.2
• (2019) „Überblick über Landeshochschulinitiativen zur Digitalisierung“. Mit Christiane Arndt und Dr. Tina Ladwig. Hamburg: TUHH Universitätsbibliothek. doi: 10.15480/882.2387.4