Re: A few questions about linguistics concerning my new project

David J. Peterson wrote:
<<<<<
What, for example, is the semantic difference between "The man
pushed the panda" and "The panda was pushed by the man"?
>>>>>
Between those exact sentences there is no difference in meaning, only in
point of view. I think the biggest difference between the two is that in 1
you can leave out the accusative and in the second the oblique (or well,
agent). And, I think you're right in thinking this is because of conjoining
VPs: The man pushes, kicks and slaps. vs. The panda is pushed, kicked and
slapped. (I feel here that English is not so happy with the first sentence...)

<<<<
Note, though, that the antipassive without
the oblique argument is the equivalent of (c), which is why (c)
is bizarre (kind of doesn't have a place in the language).
>>>>
I understand now why (c) doesn't make much sense, but is an antipassive
without the oblique argument the equivalent? I think there is a difference
because in that antipassive the agent is in the absolutive and the verb also
has a specific mark for the situation.

<<<<
One thing to note: Your example sentences above suggest that
your language is sensitive to the subject position, even though
it's an ergative-aligned language.  Even if there were some
rule requiring a pre-verbal nominal argument in all instances,
you might expect the order of NP's in (e) to be flipped (unless
the ergative argument is a true adjunct, and can appear in either
place, like a prepositional phrase or an adverb).
>>>>
Actually, my language is basically SOV, I used that strict SVO word order
for those examples. Does what you're saying also apply to SOV word order, or
doesn't this very basic way of describing some syntax apply at all to
ergative languages?


Nick Scholten

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