The Variety of Syntactic Patterns of Dative Experiencer Verbs in Italian
Abstract
This article investigates the variety of syntactic constructions characterizing Dative Experiencer verbs in Italian. This psych class, whose representative verb has always been considered piacere ‘appeal’, includes only ten verbs, which in most cases share the inverted structure, i.e. the SVO and the OVS patterns. However, DE verbs display an irregular and idiosyncratic syntactic behaviour, given the abundance of (pronominal/reflexive) transitive/non-transitive constructions in which they may appear.
open access | peer reviewed
Submitted: Sept. 26, 2024 | Accepted: Sept. 4, 2025 | Published April 29, 2026 | Language: en
Keywords Dative Experiencer • Alternation • Inverted structure • Dative verbs • Psych verbs
Copyright © 2026 Simonetta Vietri. This is an open-access work distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction is permitted, provided that the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. The license allows for commercial use. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
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