THE EXPERIENCER IN VERBAL IDIOMS OF EMOTION IN ENGLISH AND GERMAN
THE EXPERIENCER IN VERBAL IDIOMS OF EMOTION IN ENGLISH AND GERMAN

Summary/Abstract: Idioms encompass a wide variety of phrases, divergent in meaning and structure. Conceived as a contrastive study, this paper focuses on verbal idioms that render emotional states in English and German. What is characteristic about this class of idioms is that they always encode an Experiencer in their thematic grid. We provide an examination of the thematic roles assigned by the verbs to the NPs in such idioms, in an attempt to put forth a typology of emotion idioms based on the position of the Experiencer in their thematic grids. We also identify verbal idioms of emotion in which the Experiencer occurs either as an argument or as an adjunct.

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