Meanings and case marking of the Catalan verb «molestar»

Abstract

Sentences containing the Catalan verb molestar ‘to annoy’ show different meanings and syntactic patterns, a manifestation of the extraordinary semantic and syntactic flexibility of this predicate. In this study, we first analyse non-stative transitive sentences and stative sentences with this verb, with an accusative and a dative experiencer, respectively. In these sentences, it is necessary to add lexical or idiosyncratic information to the definition of the verb to distinguish different meanings and submeanings of the verb or to show that two different syntactic structures form a verbal alternation, with no change in the lexical meaning of the verb. Although the verb molestar resists forming alternations, it can participate in the causative alternation between its transitive causative meaning molestar ‘to make angry, to offend’, and the corresponding pronominal ergative that alternates with it, molestar-se ‘to get angry, to get offended’. The pronominal verb that governs a prepositional phrase, molestar-se a ‘take the trouble to, make the effort to’, differs from the pronominal ergative because it displays agentive characteristics.