Affectedness-driven phenomena? A short overview

Abstract

The notion of affectedness, linked to the idea of change that a participant undergoes or to the notion of transmission of force towards a participant, has been claimed to play a role in a wide range of linguistic phenomena at the syntax-semantics interface. In particular, the relation between affectedness and a transitive encoding is widely present in the literatura since Fillmore (1968) and Dowty (1991). Likewise, a correlation has been established between a greater or lesser degree of affectedness and a higher or lower degree of transitivity, as can be seen in the words of Hopper & Thompson (1980: 252): ‘The degree to which an action is transferred to a patient is a function of how completely this patient is affected.’