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Re: HELP: Is this sensible?

From:Carsten Becker <post@...>
Date:Tuesday, March 16, 2004, 17:17
On Tue, 16 Mar 2004 15:50:34 +0100, Henrik Theiling <theiling@...>
wrote:

Thanks, but I've got another question on what you wrote:

[...]
>It depends on how you assign agent and patient. If the assignment is >highly lexicalised, you could do anything.
[...] What do you mean with "lexicalized" here? A specific and grammaticalized definition of what is agent and what is patient? Well, I don't know if I handled AGT and PAT like you did up to now, I also followed the definition that the one who does something is the agent and the one who is affected is the patient. Nevertheless I think you are right saying that "no-one is in control of their cleverness" would make sense as well. I would rather tend to that assignment but if you have a look at the Ayeri grammar (link in the first mail), you will see adjectives are marked depending on whether their noun is (agent, ) patient or something else ("oblique"). To make this idea work in such sentences like in my example "Peter is as clever as Paul", I decided what I described in that other email: Peter-AGT, Paul-PAT. As I said, in my opinion, you, Henrik, are more right than me with this. I guess my idea also won't work with the comparative stuff if I decide to change things to what Henrik suggested. I already wrote about the comparative forms before reading Henrik's mail, so you can look up what I mean. Carsten

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Henrik Theiling <theiling@...>