The book describes the mihi est construction in Romanian (Mi- e foame/frica, me. dat = is hunger/fear 'I am hungry/ afraid'). This construction, which traces back to the Latin mihi est pattern, represents in Romanian the most natural way of expressing psychological or physiological states, while it disappeared from all other Romance languages, being replaced with a habeo structure. By means of a synchronic and diachronic corpus study, I investigate (i) the status of the core arguments of the mihi est structure, i.e. the dative experiencer and the nominative state noun, as well as (ii) its evolution throughout the centuries. My investigation reveals that the dative experiencer behaves like nominative subjects, whereas the state noun shows predicate behavior. As for the evolution of the mihi est structure, the analysis of the data reveals a certain tendency toward innovation, since in present-day Romanian it can coerce nouns coming from other semantic fields into the construction's psychological or physiological interpretation.

Could this be another aspect on which Romanian sets itself apart, this time by going against the general tendency of the European and most Romance languages toward canonical marking of core arguments?.