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Re: implicational and factive verbs

From:Dan Sulani <dnsulani@...>
Date:Thursday, January 25, 2001, 6:59
On 25 Jan, Roger Mills wrote:

>Daniel Andreasson wrote: > >>Replying to my own question. Oh well. >> >>A friend of mine sent me this. It seems okay, although he is famous >>for making the most incredible stuff up, so a word of caution. >> >>If he made the below up OTOH, he should get the Nobel Prize >>in Making Stuff Up. He who sent me this is called P-A. I >>have no idea who Hans Schröninger is. Hans referred to P-A >>as Dr. Jande. P-A is _not_ a doctor. >> >(snip) a quick visit to the MIT Press _Cambridge Mass_ did not find any of >the references. And I don't think there's another "MIT" in _Camebridge_. >Confirming my first suspicion that it's (near perfect) linguistic >gibberish.....;-)
Not to mention the obvious:
> > > > However, when we > > > > change the verb into the infinitive, this relation changes to the > > > > opposite. We now have "*Nim eat the banana", which does not in any > > > > way imply that Nim has caused the banana to change. On the contrary, > > > > the implication is rather that Nim has not (at least not yet) casued > > > > the banana to change. The verb "eat" used in the proper context is > > > > thus an example of an implicative verb.
"Nim eat the banana" either is or is not a grammatical sentence. If it is, (which of course it isn't), why mark it with an initial star? If the initial star signifies that it's ungrammatical, the sentence doesn't imply _anything_ because it's not likely to be used by a competent English speaker! BTW, anyone ever heard of (or _remember_ ;-) ) the original "Nim"? A chimpanzee called "Nim Chimpsky" who was one of the original volunteers (er, I mean "subjects" ;-) ) in the research on teaching apes to use (human) language. I don't know whether the researcher who gave the chimp the name was pro-generative grammar with a sense of humor or anti-generative grammar with a grudge. (I seem to recall, though, that it was the former.) Dan Sulani -------------------------------------------------------------------- likehsna rtem zuv tikuhnuh auag inuvuz vaka'a. A word is an awesome thing.