Linking

With reference to extensive material, the study shows that the linking behaviour of French and Italian verbs of feeling is rule-guided. The crucial factor here is neither non-accusativity nor causativity but the distinction between episodic and non-episodic feelings. The former require a subject EXPERIENCER, the latter an object EXPERIENCER. After an initial demarcation of the boundaries of the topic, a large number of classes of verbs of feeling are established, followed by an analysis of verbs of "annoyance", "liking", and "astonishment" as instances of a negative, positive, and neutral feeling, respectively.