Re: THEORY: Mixed erg/acc

>Matt:
>> (3)  Some linguists have proposed that possessive "have" is
>> derived (synchronically) by combining "be" with an adposition.
>
>Is this Hindi or English?
Any language which has "have" (English, French, German, maybe
Mandarin, etc.).

                If English, I'm aware of such proposals
>from early TG/Generative Semantics in the mid 60s, but not of any
>since then. I'd be very interested to hear if they live on; I had
>thought them forgotten. References and or discussion would be
>gratefully received by me...
I think Benveniste was the first person to come up with the
"have" = "be" + Preposition story.  I wasn't aware that this analysis
was fashionable among the Generative Semanticists, but it's hardly
surprising.  This story was revived in the early 90s by Richard
Kayne, working on auxiliary selection in Romance languages.  He
wrote a paper called "Toward a Modular Theory of Auxiliary Selection",
published in 1993 in the journal "Studia Linguistica" 47:3-31.  Most
of Mahajan's ideas derive ultimately from that paper, so that would
be a good place to start.

>BTW, IM-eccentric-O, Mahajan's story is extremely elegant; it reminds
>me of early TG. Is it published?
Probably, but I'm not sure where.  If you like, I could email you
privately with his email address and you can ask him.

>> (This latter analysis was also independently
>> proposed by the Dutch linguist Teun Hoekstra.)
>
>Where?
I'm not sure.  I found out about this analysis through conversations
with him shortly before he died, as well as through oblique references
in other papers.  Skimming through my collection of Hoekstra articles,
I find the following reference, which sounds promising:

Hoekstra, Teun.  (1986)  Passives and Participles.  In:  F. Beukema
   and A. Hulk (eds.) "Linguistics in the Netherlands 1986".  Dordrecht:
   Foris.

Cheers,
Matt.