Psych nouns and support verb constructions

This article investigates Italian psych nouns in support/light verb constructions and proposes a unified analysis of psych nouns related and unrelated to psych verbs. I examine support/light verb constructions whose nouns are morphologically related to Subject Experiencer transitive verbs (ammirazione/ammirare ‘admiration, admire’), Object Experiencer verbs (spavento/spaventare ‘fright, scare’) and SE non-transitive verbs (vergogna/vergognare ‘shame, ashame’). These noun-types surface in structurally identical support verb constructions but display distinct argument structures and semantic properties which can be singled out only by comparing them with verb constructions. The properties identified for psych nouns related to psych verbs also account for the syntax/ semantics of those nouns morphologically unrelated to any verb (ansia ‘anxiety’). I also offer a discussion on hypotheses arguing that there is no difference between support/ light verbs and full/heavy verbs through an examination of parallel data from Italian and Spanish.