Co-occurrence Strength and Transitivity Effects on Spanish Clitic Case Variation With Reverse-Psychological Predicates

• DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2021.712959
• Publication Date: 2021-07-20T17:13:39Z
• Authors: Gustavo Guajardo
• Keywords: Clitic; Variation (astronomy); Dative case

Although the most frequent psychological predicates in Spanish require third-person clitic experiencer to appear dative case, there is a well-known subclass of for which case alternates between accusative and dative. This alternation has been previously accounted by certain grammatical properties clause containing as well elements transitivity. However, since studies on subject have only looked at subset comprising transitivity, it remains be demonstrated whether can reliably reduced difference In this paper, I study extent transitivity main predictor with reverse comparing its effect another potential predictor, namely bidirectional association strength verb clitic. The results show that higher levels favor clitic, suggesting degree lexicalization clitic-verb pair. Furthermore, although found rather small compared rest predictors. All all, support previous findings literature, but they also bring fore importance frequency co-occurrence particular, language variation more generally.