Fw: Error Condition Re: Re: transitivity, etc,

Shannon West shanwest at uvic.ca
Mon Sep 30 18:35:53 UTC 2002


> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-siouan at lists.colorado.edu
> [mailto:owner-siouan at lists.colorado.edu]On Behalf Of Koontz John E
> Sent: September 29, 2002 10:29 PM
> To: Siouan List
> Subject: RE: Fw: Error Condition Re: Re: transitivity, etc,
>
>
> On Sun, 29 Sep 2002, Shannon West wrote:
> > I'm wondering about this too. Given that I do have to work with a
> > 'subject', a work-around is going to be in order. Is there any chance
> > that the either the subject or object of these verbs is different in
> > some way? A dative perhaps? (I'm grasping at straws). Also, is there
> > some ordering difference with these? I have a set that is completely
> > incomprehensible to me.
>
> Rood & Taylor discuss some aspects of this in the draft version of their
> Lakhota Sketch, but I couldn't locate the section in the published version
> in HBNAI 17.
>
> In OP there seems to be a constraint against having two patient
> pronominals, with the experiencer taking precedence over the theme.  If
> an experiencer is among the arguments, only it can be personal.  In
> Dakotan there were at least some stems that allowed both arguments to be
> pronominals, but the second person was always first (outer), as I recall
> it.
>
> Whatever principles or diagnostics enable you to select as subject the
> agent if present, and the patient if not, will probably support the
> experiencer as subject, too.

Thanks John. I haven't needed to use semantic roles for the most part, and
likely won't be (gotta work within theory restrictions, and for now that's
Minimalism).

There are definitely some verbs with 2 'stative' person markers - thawa 'to
own' comes to mind immediately. As I said in my note to David, I'll dredge
up this data again and post some of it for your
information/enjoyment/confusion/amusement at my pain of trying to figure it
out. ;)

Shannon



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