Johnson 2004 - CDLI - UCLA

constructions that occur in the BNBV inal construction are prototypical environments for
indefinite nouns that exhibit what is known as the definiteness effect (a syntactic
phenomenon that restricts the noun in certain syntactic positions to an indefinite noun,
see chapter 3 for details).
Within a wide variety of different types of case-marking systems, one often finds a
distinctive case-marking subsystem that uses the unmarked or default case (nominative or
absolutive) in opposition to a dative or other oblique case so as to code verbs of
perception and/or volition. The main characteristic of such predicates is the presence of
two arguments, typically described as “theme” and “experiencer” and the association of
these two arguments with a nominative/dative or absolutive/oblique case-marking
system. Givón, for example, speaks of “verbs of cognition, sensation or volition, whose
object registers—logically—no discernable impact or change. In fact, it is the
experiencer-subject which registers some internal/cognitive change. Common verbs in
this class are ‘see’, ‘hear’, ‘know’, ‘understand’, ‘think of’, ‘want’, ‘feel’, and most
commonly they are semantically states rather than actions” (Givón 1984, 100). Givón
notes that many such verbs of cognition, sensation and volition occur in English in a
construction that makes use of an expletive ‘it’ and a dative experiencer such as the
following examples (Givón 1984, 101, ex. 39).
(72) a. It seems to me that … (cf. I see/think that …)
b. It appears to me that … (cf. I find it apparent that …)
c. It is necessary that … (cf. I insist that …)
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