Re: Theta role?

On 15 Dec 2004, at 1.22 pm, Thomas R. Wier wrote:

> And wrote:
>> Tom Wier:
>>> there's almost no agreement on how many theta
>>> roles exist, even among grammarians who practice within the same
>>> theoretical framework. IMO, three is the best bet, since to my
>>> knowledge there are no languages where an underived verb takes
>>> more than three arguments,
>>
>> I'll bet you plenty that in English at least one verb seems to
>> take four arguments...
>
> Perhaps I should have been clearer.  I was talking about verbs
> which take four *NP* arguments.  On some analyses, English verbs
> like 'buy' and 'sell' take four arguments, but one of those must,
> in every dialect I know of, be prepositional.  These constructions
> in Georgian and Abkhaz on the contrary involve four NP arguments.
> (I can't speak for Abkhaz, but in Georgian the constructions
> alternate with variants having a postposition for the fourth
> argument.)
I think And was talking about a particular special case of anadewism,
eadewism (or aeadewism), '(an) English's already dunnit even worse'.

--
Tristan.

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