Re: Standard Average European

Eugene Oh wrote:

>I would agree with Roger. In my parsing, with "l'agent de police" in
>front and "le bandit" behind, there is no ambiguity there: the former
>noun corresponds to the former pronoun (in this case subject) while
>the latter, the latter (in this case object). Hence "il l'a vu"
>clearly means "l'agent de police a vu le bandit".
Actually, I'd still like to hear from our native speaker, as to whether (1)
it's permissible to front both the Subj. and the Obj., and (2) does the
ordering matter? and (2a) if not, can it be non-ambiguous? My non-native
feeling, like yours, is that the first fronted element is the subject
(topic) in this case (both 3d person). Obviously, in "le bandit, il m'a vu"
bandit is the subj. OTOH in "le bandit, je l'ai vu" it's the Object.

Prevli started off with a similar problem:
la:ter zehen COP BANDIT
see-past [3subj-3obj] cop(subj.) bandit(obj.)-- OK because of V PRO S O word
order

And la:ter zehen is "he saw him/her"   But--

la:ter zehen bandit  could then have meant either "he saw the bandit" or
"the bandit saw him"
We fixed it by introducing an object marker: la:ter zehen _a_ bandit, which
can only mean "he saw the bandit"; and la:ter zehen bandit only "the bandit
saw him".

You can front the subj. or obj. in Prevli; subj. is no problem because of
the object marker-- I think fronted object might require a passive verb or
some other construction (not sure I've dealt with that possibility in my
grammar yet...oh the problems that arise...).
>
>I'm curious: what on earth is "y a bon"?
Well, literally, "there has good", I suppose reduced from "il y a bon"
(still poor French) presumably the way some ad writer thought les pauvres
Africains spoke. Mind, I'm recalling this from 50 years
ago...........hélas.

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