Assumptions about Communication, etc.

[Tom Givon]

With all due respect, if you work on verb complementation & causative
construction, the concepts of "agent" and "intent" are absolutely
crucial fdor understanding 'rules of grammar'. So let's not throw them
out prematurely.  TG
========================

Scott Delancey wrote:
>
> 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