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

On Monday, April 5, 2004, at 03:48 AM, Herman Miller wrote:

> 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? Are there no languages
> that express this idea as "David apparently left", without having a
> troublesome verb like "seem"?
Possibly - I stringly suspect there are natlangs where 'seemed' must be
impersonal, i.e. "it seemed (that) David left".

> 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".
Yep - I too will be interested in the replies.

>>     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?
> Certainly "David tried and David left" doesn't mean the same thing as
> "David tried to leave",
No, it certainly does not.

"David tried to leave" does _not_ tells us that David actually left;
indeed, by itself the implication is that he made an effort but didn't
actually manage to leave.

Whereas, "David tried and left" tells us he actually left. On the other
hand it's not clear what he tried. if I heard the sentence "David tried
and David left" out of context, my immediate response would be "What did
he try?" (expecting a noun as the object).

> so the only thing this shows is that "try" and
> "seem" can't be used in the same contexts.
Yep - so what's with all these 'raising verbs' and 'equi verbs' (Ach -
What ghastly terminology)?

Trask doesn't appear to mention 'equi verbs', but defines 'raising verbs'
thus:
"A lexical verb or predicate which typically appears in a syntactic
structure in which its surface subject is logically or semantically the
subject of its complement clause. A familiar example is _seem_: in _Lisa
seems to be happy_, the NP _Lisa_ is semantically the subject of _be
happy_ but grammatically the subject of -seem_."

This must mean that verbs like 'can' (be able) must surely also be raising
verbs as those languages that don't possess an infinitive and, therfore,
can't make the short cut of English 'Lisa appears to be happy' but have to
say "it appears that Lisa is happy", also have to explicitly state that
subject of the complement of 'can', e.g. in modern Greek:
mporoume na   pame  simera
we-can   that we-go to-day = we can go today

Both verbs are finite and have the 1st personal plural ending, the second
verb being in the subjunctive mood.

But consider this:
prospathei   na   fygei
he-is-trying that he-may-leave = he is trying to go.

Isn't logical and implicit subject of 'to go' "he", which is _explicitly_
expressed in modern Greek? So why isn't "try' a raising verb.

And what are equi verbs?



Ray
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