Re: quadrivalent verb

On the one hand, I'm not sure the "that" qualifies as an adposition
here.  If you plop a clause into any other argument slot, you need a
"that", even if it's not acting as a conjunction:

"That he's not coming is assured" - Subject

On the other, you can't put anything *but* a clause into the alleged
fourth argument slot of "bet", whereas the other three can have
arbitrary pronoun/noun phrases.  Which makes me think it's not really
an argument slot.


On Tue, Sep 30, 2008 at 8:34 AM, Eugene Oh <un.doing@...> wrote:
> This is much different from the book sale example. The clause "he's not
> coming" should not qualify because it is missing an optional "that" in
> front, whereas "her" in the book sale example was genuinely promoted via a
> syntactic switch to fulfill the same purpose as the preposition.
> And, since the preposition "to" qualifies in argument-defining, the
> preposition "for" should also qualify.
>
> Eugene
>
> On Tue, Sep 30, 2008 at 4:06 PM, Philip Newton <philip.newton@...>wrote:
>
>> On Tue, Sep 30, 2008 at 00:54, Eldin Raigmore <eldin_raigmore@...>
>> wrote:
>> > As for English tetravalent verbs; maybe "bet" is a good one?
>>
>> Hm, compelling.
>>
>> For example, "[I] bet [you] [20 bucks] [he's not coming]".
>>
>> Cheers,
>> --
>> Philip Newton <philip.newton@...>
>>
>


--
Mark J. Reed <markjreed@...>

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