[Lingtyp] terminological question about intransitive verbs

Christian Lehmann christian.lehmann at uni-erfurt.de
Sat May 15 10:28:56 UTC 2021


Hi Don,

thanks for your suggestions.
>
> I assume you don't want to use actor/undergoer-focused because of the 
> various (potentially conflicting!) uses in information structure.
Yes.
>
> What about actor/undergoer-directed?
This may be a good choice. Maybe better than "agentive/patientive", 
because what is meant are macro-roles rather than roles.
>
> Also, I noticed you didn't mention the more abstract designation 
> rather than terms, e.g. Sₐ vs Sₚ. Was there a reason for that? 
> Comrie's (possibly predated, I didn't check who first came up with it) 
> method was to list the different pairs of terms used and then prefer 
> Sₐ vs Sₚ.
I don't know whether these abbreviations have been used as attributes, 
like "an Sₚ verb". Anyway, I would not use them in the present case 
since the language I have to describe (Cabecar) is full of ergative 
constructions, and use of the notion S (subject) would imply an undue 
generalization here.

Best,
Christian
-- 

Prof. em. Dr. Christian Lehmann
Rudolfstr. 4
99092 Erfurt
Deutschland

Tel.: 	+49/361/2113417
E-Post: 	christianw_lehmann at arcor.de
Web: 	https://www.christianlehmann.eu

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/lingtyp/attachments/20210515/d3189719/attachment.htm>


More information about the Lingtyp mailing list