ABSTRACT
The term ‘experiencer’ within a number of linguistic theories designates a semantic relationship that refers to the participant who experiences a state, e.g., ‘I’ in ‘I felt cold’ (Matthews 1997: 122). English, German, Russian, French, and many other Indo-European languages sometimes encode the experiencer as a subject of the clause, as in the example above and others, such as ‘I love’, ‘I enjoy’; French j’aime; and Russian (ya) l’ubl’u ‘I love’. The same languages sometimes code the experiencer not as a subject but as a direct or indirect object, e.g., English ‘it pains me that . . .’; French il me plait ‘I like it’ (lit. ‘it pleases me’). In some Indo-European languages, such as German and Polish, the experiencer is marked by the same form that marks the indirect object:
(1) mir ist kalt
1sg:dat be cold
‘I am cold’.
mir gefällt dieses Pferd
1sg:dat please dem:nom horse
‘I like this horse’.
mir tut der Zahn weh
1sg:dat do def:nom tooth sore
‘I have a toothache’. (German)
