Re: Question for English Speakers about Secondary Predicates (also posted on ZBB)

On Thursday 28 December 2006 5:50 am, Christopher Bates wrote:
> I want to see if people agree with my own intuition about the behavoir
> secondary predicates in English with indefinite controllers. Basically,
> consider a sentence with a secondary predicate. The typical example is
> something like:
>
> The man ate the meat raw
>
> Now, "raw" is making an assertion about one of the arguments of the main
> verb, namely "the meat". It asserts that at the time of eating, the meat
> was raw. But almost all the examples linguists tend to use of secondary
> predicates have definite controllers. I want people's judgement about
> the following sentences:
>
> (1) The man ate some meat raw
> (2) The man ate some raw meat
>
> Firstly, are both grammatical? If they are, is there a difference in
> meaning for you? If there isn't, do you prefer to use one over the
> other? Here are my answers:
>
> (2) is clearly grammatical. (1) is possible but sounds awkward... I
> cannot percieve any meaning difference between the two. I prefer to use
> (2) over (1).
>
> This is a very important question for me because I'm making a slightly
> barmy engineered language, Díwà, where predication is really a more
> important notion than the distinction between nouns and verbs, which
> doesn't really exist. Now, Díwà has a construction very similar to
> English secondary predicates that allows you to make assertions about
> the arguments of some other verb. However, this construction is also
> extremely commonly used with indefinite arguments, for the following
> reason. Consider a sentence like:
>
> I saw a man
>
> In such sentences with indefinite NPs, the NP does not serve the typical
> nominal function of identifying a referent, but rather forms a covert
> part of the predication. Its structure is really something more like:
>
> see(I,X) and man(X)
> = I saw something, and that something was a man
>
> In Díwà, predication is the dominant notion, so Díwà marks this
> distinction between NPs that serve the purpose of identification vs
> those that are really predicative by making predicative NPs into
> secondary predicates, pretty much. This means, though, that Díwà does
> not distinguish (1) and (2), since both the fact that it was meat that
> the man ate and the fact that it was raw form part of the predication.
> This is all based on my own thinking, and if I've come to the wrong
> conclusions regarding indefinite NPs then Díwà is doing something even
> more insane than it was before... if, however, I'm right, then I predict
> that natlangs like English will either disprefer secondary predicates
> with indefinite controllers, or have no significant meaning difference
> between sentences like (1) and (2).
>
There is a difference in emphasis between 1 and 2. In 1, that fact that the
meat was raw is more marked: I would usually expect the context to indicate
that he was desperate, or the power was out, or he was eccentric, or
something. In 2, the meat just happens to be raw.
--
Elyse Grasso

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