ADS-L Digest - 7 Jul 2014 to 8 Jul 2014 (#2014-19)

[Laurence Horn]

On Jul 9, 2014, at 8:51 AM, Elizabeth J. Pyatt wrote:

> I would agree that pragmatically this sentence doesn't work because most terrestrial plants can't choose to cultivate themselves. Further "cultivate" is not generally considered an unaccusative verb like "start" or "close" - that is, the verb assumes there is an active agent initiating the cultivation.

Interesting suggestion, but I'm not sure how general it is.  I think the possessive may be part of it, as well as whether what follows "start" is a verb or noun:

"The Titanic started sinking at 11:40 p.m on April 15,1912" (Google hit; there are others like it)
#The Titanic started its sinking at 11:40…

The Titanic started submerging at 11:40p.m.
#The Titanic started its submersion at 11:40p.m.

The bulldozers starting demolishing the house at noon.
#The bulldozers started their demolition of the house at noon.
The workers started their demolition of the house at noon.  

On the other hand, I see lots of hits for "X started its decline", where X = Rome, liberalism, Nokia, the WWF, MMA,…

LH

> 
> But suppose Purslane is an exotic sentient plant that can choose to reproduce itself at will? Then I think the sentence WOULD be considered OK (more or less).
> 
> Our pragmatic engine really, really wants to make sense of any sentence, so there definitely cases where sentences first considered "ungrammatical" become OK in the right semantic frame. 
> 
> That's why I gave up being a semantician ;)
> 
> My two cents
> 
> Elizabeth
> 
> On Jul 9, 2014, at 12:00 AM, ADS-L automatic digest system <LISTSERV at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU> wrote:
> 
>> Date:    Tue, 8 Jul 2014 13:54:58 +0800
>> From:    W Brewer <brewerwa at GMAIL.COM>
>> Subject: Re: Is there anything ungrammatical about this sentence, beyond...
>> 
>> WG:  <<Is there anything ungrammatical about this sentence>>
>> JL:  <<Wrong as can be, regardless of syntax.>>
>> RA:  << Nothing syntactically wrong>>
>> NC: <<Colorless green Purslane started its cultivation furiously.>>
> 
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