Re: OT: sorta OT: cases: please help...

Christopher Wright <faceloran@...> wrote:

> > [comments about "being" being not an action]
>
> However, "to be" is a verb, and when there is a matter of grammar, it
> usually doesn't care about meaning. You wouldn't distinguish the
> conjugation of verbs of motion from the conjugation of sensory verbs, for
> instance.
Well, there are languages whose grammars DO care about meaning.
This is most salient in what are called "active" languages.
Those languages make a big difference between verbs that denote actions
originating from the subject, and verbs that denote states or events
happening to the subject not acting out of itself,
in treating the subjects of the latter as if they were objects.

Consider the following three sentences:

1. The child throws the ball.

2. The child laughs.

3. The ball falls.

The first two sentences denote actions: the child does something.
The third does not, or at least the ball doesn't do anything out
of itself, it just happens to move towards the ground by the external
force of gravity.  An active language would apply the same grammatical
treatment to "the ball" in both sentence 1 and sentence 3, as it would
apply the same (though different) grammatical treatment to "the child"
in sentence 1 and sentence 2.

For a more detailed explanation of this, ask Daniel Andreasson,
he is an expert on such matters and has written a thesis about
the matter that can be found at

http://home.swipnet.se/escape/active.html

And even in languages like English that don't do this, grammar is not
entirely blind to such matters.  Ever tried to passivize a stative verb
(a verb denoting a state rather an action)?  Try, and you'll see what
I mean.

Jörg.

Replies