Re: quadrivalent verb

Alternatively,
"It is assured that he is not coming."

I don't see the logic behind considering it an argument slot, or else "I
think that he is right" would involve a bivalent verb, which is hardly so.

If we had to strictly give a term to the function of that "that" in your
"assured" sentence, I say it is an alternative nominalisation equivalent to
"his not coming" and completely non-syntactic.

Eugene

On Tue, Sep 30, 2008 at 8:50 PM, Mark J. Reed <markjreed@...> wrote:

> 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@gmail.com
> >wrote:
> >
> >> On Tue, Sep 30, 2008 at 00:54, Eldin Raigmore <eldin_raigmore@yahoo.com
> >
> >> 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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