ABSTRACT
This chapter describes experiencer predication in several languages, starting with a language that has a dedicated experiencer predication used with a large number of experiencers, and then proceed to discuss languages that have fewer experiencer predications. It analyzes similarities and differences in experiencer predications across languages, and tests whether the hypotheses about the conditions for the coding of the experiencer are supported by the data at hand. Chadic languages, the largest and most typologically diverse family within the Afroasiatic phylum, constitute a particularly fertile object of investigation because they display considerable variation with respect to the coding of experiencers. Languages differ as to which predicates require the experiencer to be coded as non-subject and which languages code the experiencer as subject. In some of these languages the default value for all transitive predicates is the point of view of the goal, and in other languages the default point of view of transitive verbs is that of the subject.
