Re: Raising and Equi-verbs: a birds eye overview

* Herman Miller said on 2004-04-05 04:48:19 +0200
> taliesin the storyteller wrote:
> >Basically, there are verbs that take can take subclauses as arguments,
> >here are two, seem and try:
> >
> >    1) "David seemed to leave"
> >    2) "David tried to leave"
> >
> >The first is a raising-verb, the second is an equi-verb. Ways to
> >test for the difference is eg. to try to rewrite the sentences:
> >
> >    a) By replacing the subject by "it" or "there" (aka. "empty
> >       subjects" or "expletive pronouns") and keep the meaning
> >
> >        1) "It seemed that David left"
> >        2) "*It tried that David left"
>
> Okay, raising verbs make sense, but I would've expected them to be some
> odd peculiarity of English (or Germanic languages in general). Is it
> really the case that all languages have them?
That's what I said to my teacher but I couldn't come up with any
counter-examples, so... The only non-IE-languages I've studied is Akan
and Basque (working on Japanese) though so I don't have that many
examples to draw from.

> Are there no languages that express this idea as "David apparently
> left", without having a troublesome verb like "seem"?
Taruven will use suffixes for this kind of raising verbs (subject
raising verbs), by fiat :) That's why I need to know which ones there
are...

> But I don't get what "equi-verbs" are supposed to be, unless it's
> "something that looks like a raising verb but isn't".
>
> >    b) By giving both verbs in the sentence the same overt (visible,
> >       explicit) subject and use a conjunction
> >
> >        1) "*David seemed and David left"
> >        2) "David tried and David left"
>
> Isn't the difference in this case just the fact that "tried" can be used
> without an object (like "ate"), but "seemed" requires an object?
Making good examples is hard :) The difference is that "seem" doesn't
really need a subject but can borrow the subject of its embedded clause,
while "try" must have a subject, and it is the same as the subject of
its embedded clause. There are lots more tests but making good examples
(that mirrors each other so that you can easily spot the difference) is
hard. And of course, at least in English, there are words that are hard
to classify, like "expect". Raising or equi?


t.

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