Re: THEORY: unergative

On Sunday, February 22, 2004, at 07:56 AM, Philippe Caquant wrote:

[snip]

> there seems that they brought new friends called
> anti-accusative,
..denoting a case-marking system, found in a minority of accusative
languages i.e. those like Latin, English, French & most IE languages as
well as many others) in which the subjects of both intransitive &
transitive verbs are the treated the same while the direct objects of
transitive verbs are treated differently. In anti-accusative systems,
there is overt marking of the subjects, but no case marking of the object
or accusative case. I can't, in fact, think of any examples; but
presumably one or two must exist.

> anti-passive,
The example given by Trask is from Yup'ik Eskimo in which the normal
transitive:
qimugte-m neraa        neqa
dog-ERG   eat-3SG;3Sg  fish-ABS  = the dog ate the fish

..is contrasted with the antipassive construction:
qimagta ner'uq       neq-mek
dog-ABS eat-3rdSING  fish-ABL = the dog ate some fish

In other words, it's a construction found in ergative languages i.e. those,
  as you say, in which the subjects of intransitive verbs and the direct
objects of transitive verbs are treated identically, e.g. 'absolute' case,
  and the subject of transitive verbs are treated differently, e.g.
ergative case.  This is most typically marked morphologically with
absolute & ergative cases, but may be expressed syntactically (see Barnard
Comrie "Ergativity" in 'Syntactic Typology', edited by W.P. Lehmann
(Austin, Texas, 1978), and & Robert Dixon '"Ergativity', Language 55 (1979)
, pages 59 to 138).

In the anti-passive construction, the verb has an apparently intransitive
form, and the object is in some oblique case (i.e. neither absolute nor
ergative), e.g. the ablative in the example above. Often, tho not
necessarily (I understand) it serves to denote an object is indefinite or
only partially affected by the action.

> .................................primary theme,
> secundary theme
Can't help you there, I'm afraid. Certainly, in the theme-rheme contrast
the terms don't seem to make much sense. I would guess they are terms from
Government Binding theory and/or Case Grammar analysis. I leave it to any
proponents of these theories to contradict me or to explain the terms.

> and anti-ergative
..denoting (according to Trask) a system in which a single case is used to
denote all subjects and direct objects when no subject is overtly
expressed.  However, if the subject is expressed, the object will be
marked.

It has been claimed that both Finnish and Welsh have this pattern. But I
can't see how this can reasonably be claimed for Welsh (except by strange
manipulation of evidence which some jargon-spinners seem to delight in). I
don't know enough about Finnish to comment.  Can Philip Jonsson shed any
light on this somewhat shadowy term?

If Finnish is the only example, one has to question IMO whether
anti-ergative is realy a meaningful term.

> (probably others
> too).
Almost certainly   :)

[snip]

> I shot the sheriff
[snip]

> By-me shot the sheriff
[snip]


> So what's exactly the theme and the rheme in those two
> sentences, I'm not clear about it yet.
But _out of context_ *no one* can be sure what the theme and rheme are in
either sentence!

> Normally the
> theme is "what we're talking about", and the rheme
> "which new information we're adding to that topic".
> Maybe I'm wrong too ?
Nope - the theme is what we are talking or writing about; the rheme is
what is added to advance the communication.  The terms were coined by the
Prague School of linguistics. In the anglophone world, 'theme' is more
often called 'topic', and 'rheme' then called 'comment'.

If the discussion is about what you did in the shoot out, then 'I'/'by-me'
  is the theme/topic and 'shot the sheriff' is the rheme/comment. (If it's
not known, till you say it, that the _sheriff_ got shot, then 'sheriff' is
the focus).

But if 'tis known the sheriff got shot, and you're wondering who did it,
then 'sheriff' is the theme/topic and 'I shot'/'by-me shot' is the
rheme/comment.

> But if I burst into the saloon
> and yell "I shot the sheriff !", looks to me that
> there wasn't any theme and the whole sentence is the
> rheme ?
Again, it depends on the context. If the town was peaceful, you used a
silencer so no-one in the saloon realized anyone had been shot and for
some strange reason you burst into the saloon shouting out the above news
(to get lynched?), then I guess there's no theme. But things usually
usually happen in some sort of context.

[snip]

> --- "Thomas R. Wier" <trwier@...> wrote:
[snip]

>> The terms
>> 'unaccusative' and 'unergative' are really very
>> misleading, and
>> should be dropped, if it were possible to do so.
>> (It's not.)
As I understand it, 'inaccusative' and 'unergative' are terms used in the
Relational Grammar theory and, I believe, Government Binding theories
(again, I am ready to be corrected). I can well believe that used outside
of those theories he terms are very misleading.

Ray
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