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<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>On the question of agency and intentionality and
how they work in grammar,<BR>here's a paper that should be read much more widely
than I suspect it has<BR>been.<BR><BR>Van Valin, Robert D. Jr. & David P.
Wilkins, 1996. The case for 'effector':<BR>Case roles, agents, and
agentivity revisited. In Shibatani & Thompson, eds,<BR>Grammatical
constructions: their form and meaning, 289-322. Oxford:<BR>Clarendon
Press.<BR><BR>Maybe it's not such a bad idea to have some new labels for case
roles if<BR>many of us seem to be using an old familiar one like 'agent' in lots
of<BR>different ways? Amongst other things, Van Valin and Wilkins
argue<BR>convincingly that a role they call 'effector', which is pretty much an
agent<BR>stripped of intentionality, is what most grammars are sensitive too
rather<BR>than any intentional agent. Using the notion of effector rather
than agent<BR>buys them a whole lot of stuff, including the ability to handle
sentences<BR>like 'this key opens the door' which is just as difficult to handle
with the<BR>intentional agent role as Scott DeLancey's 'Shit! I broke
it!'.<BR><BR>I wouldn't want to deny that fully intentional agents are important
in some<BR>languages sometimes, but I'm with Scott DeLancey on this one: it
seems to me<BR>that they're of pretty marginal significance most of the
time.<BR><BR>John Bowden</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Linguistics Department</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Research School of Pacific and Asian
Studies</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Australian Natiuonal University</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Canberra, ACT 0200</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>AUSTRALIA<BR></DIV></FONT></BODY></HTML>