Johnson 2004 - CDLI - UCLA

In the examples in (72), a dummy pronoun appears in the subject position, while the
experiencer appears in a dative prepositional phrase immediately before that which has
been perceived, i.e., the theme. Predicates of this type also bear a strong resemblance to
existential verb constructions such as, for example, “there is a rat in the soup” (see below,
section 3.4, for further explication). In both types of construction, we find three crucial
components: (i) a dummy pronoun or expletive in the subject position before the verb, (ii)
a theme or perceived object/situation that follows the verb in some cases but cannot be
characterized as a logical object or semantic patient, and (iii) an oblique argument that
refers to either the location in which the object/situation occurs (as in the existential
sentence) or the person to whom the object/situation is apparent as in (72). Given the use
of the ergative postposition to refer to an inalienable possessor as outlined above, one
way of thinking about the case-marking relations that hold between the different nominal
phrases in a BNBV inal clause is that the locative-terminative source argument represents
an oblique case and that the combination of the bare inalienable noun and its raised
inalienable possessor act as a single nominative/absolutive case-marked argument.
In my view there are two important corollaries that follow from the case-marking
relations that hold between the zero-marked nominative/absolutive experiencer +
inalienable noun and the oblique case-marked perceived object: (i) the non-agentive
character of the perceiver in combination with the stative and/or resultative semantics of
the predicate and (ii) the fact that surface form of BNBV inal predicates resembles the
surface form or an ordinary transitive clause with ergative agent, *-e, and zero-marked
absolutive patient (where the perceived object in the locative-terminative case is
90