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.

Over the past few decades, the book series Linguistische Arbeiten [Linguistic Studies], comprising over 500 volumes, has made a significant contribution to the development of linguistic theory both in Germany and internationally. The series will continue to deliver new impulses for research and maintain the central insight of linguistics that progress can only be made in acquiring new knowledge about human languages both synchronically and diachronically by closely combining empirical and theoretical analyses. To this end, we invite submission of high-quality linguistic studies from all the central areas of general linguistics and the linguistics of individual languages which address topical questions, discuss new data and advance the development of linguistic theory.