Assumptions about Communication, etc.

[Scott Delancey]

On Mon, 5 Mar 2001, Noel Rude wrote:

> But one wonders -- might the fact that we posit semantic roles such as Agent
> (intentional cause) be of interest to philosophers?  One assumes they know
> about this -- they do, don't they?

They know all about that one--the concept of intentional Agent is
originally theirs. We lifted it from them without thinking carefully
about whether it was really suited for our needs, which IMO it
certainly isn't--there's very little *grammatical* evidence for the
relevance of intention to the Agent role (in the linguistic, as
opposed to the philosopher's, sense).

Scott DeLancey