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

In French, you can say:
- Il semble que David soit parti
- Apparemment, David est parti.

Theses two sentences have very narrowly the same
meaning. Note that in the Russian sentence:
Kazhetsja David ushel
(meaning the same), "kazhetsja" = "it seems" behaves
rather like an adverb too (frozen form). It is close
to "naverno" (probably), which is an adverb.

So clearly, 'it seems that' has not the same verbal
status that 'to leave'. I believe some call it a
metapredicate:
Predicate = "David left"
Metapredicate = "it seems" (predicate)

For me, this is just a way to express a modality.

The situation in "David tried to left" is something
completely different. I didn't know the expression
"equi-verb" (what does that mean ?). But I think it's
alike another concept, like in French:
- Il a failli tomber (he was on the edge of falling /
about to fall, but he didn't); "faillir" is not "to
fail"
In Russian this is:
On chut' ne upal
where chut' is clearly an adverb.

I would be interested to know about other linguistic
terms to qualify those two concepts.

--- taliesin the storyteller
<taliesin-conlang@...> wrote:
> * 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?

=====
Philippe Caquant

"High thoughts must have high language." (Aristophanes, Frogs)

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