Re: Evolution of Applicatives

Thomas R. Wier scripsit:

> Ah, well, we *were* talking about linguistics on a rather formal
> level, so I just assumed...
Nah, it's just that the polysemy of "topic" escaped me for a moment.

> but I still can't get any reading other
> with Tuesday as the patient, and not as the day.  I'm pretty sure
> that most English speakers will agree with me in this respect.
You astound me.  If I wrote a poem called "Ode to Tuesday", you really
can't describe this as "writing on Tuesday", in exactly the same way
that if I wrote a paper about the _Critique of Pure Reason_, you could
describe this as "writing on Kant"?

> it has to be grammatical for the relevant reason.
I accept this.

> Thus, the fact that someone or something named 'Tuesday' might exist
> in the world does not change the fact that the day of the week by that
> name cannot be passivized for any reason from an adjunct.
Fair enough, though I still deny "the fact", given the polysemy of "on".

> I have to disagree... what you say here is tantamount to denying
> formal structure any role in providing grammaticality judgements.
> (I respect you, John, but you must admit that this is a rather
> extreme functionalist position you're taking.)
Well, my real position is that the concept "grammaticality judgment"
is simply a category mistake.  Grammaticality is defined within a
given formal structure, and within that structure it is an absolute
notion, as much so as validity in formal logic: judgment just doesn't
enter into it.  What we actually have in all these Chomskyan self-tests
are acceptability judgments, which are quite a different thing.

> Again, this isn't relevant. *"The NEA was given money to by
> liberal activists" is grossly ungrammatical, and that's the analogous
> structure you're invoking.
Unfortunately, the more I think about this one, the more acceptable it
becomes.

> One cannot just say anything.
Sometimes I wonder.   See the Harvard Law of Animal Behavior:

	In a well-controlled experimental situation, a well-trained
	experimental animal will do whatever it damned well wants to.

(This is not cited for its grammaticality!)

--
John Cowan  cowan@ccil.org  www.reutershealth.com  www.ccil.org/~cowan
If a soldier is asked why he kills people who have done him no harm, or a
terrorist why he kills innocent people with his bombs, they can always
reply that war has been declared, and there are no innocent people in an
enemy country in wartime.  The answer is psychotic, but it is the answer
that humanity has given to every act of aggression in history.  --Northrop Frye