Active & stative verbs in biclausal sentences.

[Shannon West]

Rankin, Robert L wrote:

> So, in the language(s) YOU are studying, can
>you have something like:
>
>1.  I ran fast and am very tired.  (two conjugated verbs)
>
>And, then, in the sentence:
>
>2.  The boy chased the deer and (X) was very tired.
>
>Would the sentence, without any noun or pronoun mentioned for X, mean
>"the boy chased the deer and he (the boy) was very tired" OR would it
>mean "The boy chased the deer and he (the deer) was very tired."?  Or
>would it simply remain ambiguous?  How do speakers treat this?
>
>These are things I should know, but I don't.  Anyone have answers here?
>
>Bob
>
>
In Nakoda, my consultant would not allow the object of the first clause
to be the subject of the second, regardless of the verb class. So
sentences like (2) are never ambiguous to her. The only way you could
get that the deer was tired was to put in an emphatic pronoun, a big
pause and the consideration that the deer was old information. Even then
she didn't overly like the construction.

Even sentences like "The man insulted the woman and then (x) sulked"
always read that the subject of the first clause was the subject of the
second. It helped motivate my argument that there is a VP in Nakoda.

Shannon