Re: Soaloa evolves, and a small challenge

--- In conlang@yahoogroups.com, "David J. Peterson" <dedalvs@G...> wrote:

> "What cake did John buy and devour?"
>
> But if you take away the last one...
>
> *"What cake did John buy and come home?"
>
> For me, that last sentence is robustly ungrammatical, but I
> get the sense that opinions may vary.
Yeah, I agree on that.  I guess what makes these sentences
grammatical is that "go home, sit down and play" can be seen
as a single (if complex) transitive verb.  So can "buy and
devour".  "Buy and come home" doesn't work well as a unitary
predicate, because its component actions don't make coherent
sense.  The fact that "come home" is intransitive isn't the
problem, as can be evidenced by the following sentence, which
sounds sound to me:

"Venice is one of those cities you want to see and die."

(I.e. seeing Venice gives you a sense of fulfillment.)


-- Christian Thalmann

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