Re: THEORY: transitivity

On Mon, 20 Sep 2004 07:23:25 -0500, Thomas R. Wier <trwier@...>
wrote:

>Philippe wrote:
>> As I always quote, "to follow" is transitive in French (and
>> in English),
>
>I can't speak for French, but 'follow' in English is labile:
>
>  'You should follow those signs until you see the busstop.'
>  'You run along, and I'll follow.'
>
>> but not in German (dative).
>
>Paul Hopper and Sandra Thompson wrote an excellent article in the early
>80s (Language, Vol. 56, no. 2) entitled "Transitivity in Grammar
>and Discourse". Therein they list 10 (!) different criteria that
>languages use to encode transitivity, and they show that transitivity
>is really more of a cline than a discrete proposition.  The 10
>criteria are:
>
>(1)  Participants:  two or more vs. one
>(2)  Kinesis: action vs. nonaction
>(3)  Aspect: telic vs. atelic
>(4)  Punctuality: punctual vs. nonpunctual
>(5)  Volitionality: volitional vs. nonvolitional
>(6)  Affirmation:  affirmative vs. negative
>(7)  Mode: realis vs. irrealis
>(8)  Agency:  A high in potency vs. A low in potency
>(9)  Affectedness of O:  O totally affected vs. O not affected
>(10) Individuation of O: O highly individuated vs. O nonindividuated
>
>By most of these criteria, I would say German 'folgen' is high on
>the transitivity cline, despite the fact that it subcategorizes for
>a dative object. Another point is that sometimes verbs just lexically
>specify things, and their behavior does not reflect any actual synchronic
>generalizations about where the verb fits on the transitivity cline.
>So, if we've decided to lump things as transitive or intransitive,
>I would say 'folgen' is transitive.
So you prefer underlying structure to morphology, semantic transitivity to
overtly encoded transitivity? I like better sticking to the surface,
because otherwise I'm getting the feeling that the analysis of all those
funny forms and their functions becomes very pointless and that I'd better
study Logics than Linguistics.

gry@s:
j. 'mach' wust