† † † Disambiguation of arg umen t reference

In a message dated 10/9/02 3:12:24 PM, DigitalScream@AOL.COM writes:

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>Fuscian wrote:
>
><<You can't say *"What are you putting on?"
>because you're leaving out an entire argument - the object placed. It is
>perfectly all right to say "What are you putting the book on?" The place
>argument, being core, cannot be dropped, but it can be questioned, dangling
>preposition and all, just like any other argument.>>
>
>Yeah.   That was the point.   You can't leave the argument out, hence,
>it is
>core.   If you can leave an argument out, then it's oblique.
Right. I understood that you said that, and was agreeing. But it seemed like
you were saying also that a preposition of a core argument can't remain in
question form, and I was disagreeing with that. Perhaps I misunderstood you.

>Am I getting
>these definitions wrong?
>
>And, yes, "to go to" is different from "to go" in that example.   English
>is
>fun that way.   A good example would be "I'm eating on the table".   "On
>the
>table" is *definitely* oblique, since it doesn't change the idea of "eating"
>at all.
>
><<If "to ___" with the verb "go" is
>oblique, with what verb is it core?>>
>
>Don't know what or why you mean here, but "talk", I guess: "I talk to him",
>vs. *"I talk him".   But there, the verb is "to talk to", so the argument
>is
>still "him", I guess, and the "to" part is just an obligatory part of the
>verb.   Yeah, I don't know what you mean here.   And I thought that it
>was
>core with "to go"...   Oh well.
You had said that in "going to the store", "to the store" is not a core
argument. What I meant to say was that it is a core argument, since it is
necessary and takes uses the preposition "to", which is associated with
indirect objects, which are core.

Well, I just did a little googling on the matter. It seems, according to
SIL's glossary, that "core" simply means anything that is subj, dir obj, or
ind obj. That was one idea I had in my head, anyway. I'm having second
thoughts about "to the store" being core though, because "to" is more
allative than dative there, and perhaps should be considered differently
What we were both getting at, in different ways, was, I think, the notion of
complements, i.e., items that are obligatory. But something can be obligatory
and not be core, e.g.... the place argument after "put". It is neither a
subject nor an in/direct object, but it is obligatory, so it is an oblique
complement.


Josh Roth
http://members.aol.com/fuscian/home.html