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

John Boyle jpboyle at midway.uchicago.edu
Wed Oct 2 00:36:43 UTC 2002


>  > -----Original Message-----
>>  From: owner-siouan at lists.colorado.edu
>>  [mailto:owner-siouan at lists.colorado.edu]On Behalf Of R. Rankin
>>  Sent: September 29, 2002 4:16 PM
>>  To: siouan at lists.colorado.edu
>>  Subject: Re: Fw: Error Condition Re: Re: transitivity, etc,
>>
>>
>>  I think all the MVS languages have this pattern with at
>>  least a few of those "experiencer" verbs.  They're not
>>  just Dakotan, and you can get two stative pronominals.
>>  Membership in the class varies, just as stative-status
>>  does across Siouan.
>>
>>  If you believe that "subject" is part of "UG", then you
>>  have verbs with stative subjects acting transitively on
>>  objects -- both marked w/ pronominals from the
>>  "stative" set.
>
>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.
>
>Linda? Do you have a set of these in Nakota? Any idea at all how they work,
>because they seem to be out to lunch and completely different from many of
>the Lakhota ones.
>
>Shannon
>(I am *so* hoping to deal with this as a 'I don't know how this works, it
>requires further study'. <grin>)

Hi All,

I don't think 'subject' is a part of UG at lease in a GB/MP framework
(although it is in a LFG/RG framework).  As a matter of fact, the
primacy of grammatical relations (subject, object, indirect object,
etc.) is denied in GB/MP.  These relations are derived from other
primitives.  There properties emerge from various components of the
grammar (structural position, case, theta-theory, etc.)  There should
be no rule/transformation that refers to "subject" that can't be
formulated in terms of "agent" (theta-role) or "higest NP in the
clause" (position) or "nominative" (case). For more on this see James
McCloskey's article on subjects in Haegeman's 1999 Elements of
Grammar.  It is a good overview of all of the relevant arguments and
decompositions.
	I'm not quite sure how to look at these types of double
stative verbs, but we should be able to come up with something.

--John
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