Re: Questions Concerning Grammar

>
> A word of warning:  hierarchical languages (aka
> inverse languages)
> have also IMHO confusingly and unhelpfully been
> called "agent-patient"
> systems.  It's best to stick to "active-stative"
> (the traditional
> label) or better "split-S"/"fluid-S" languages.
Thank you
>
> (The latter makes the claim that there is a category
> "S" for
> the single argument of intransitives, which assumes
> that every
> language contrasts transitive versus intransitive
> sentences. So,
> it might beg the question somewhat, but I think it's
> still better
> than "active/stative", which assumes animacy, rather
> than agency
> or volitionality or kinesis etc., is the deciding
> factor.)
>
> >  Stated more precisely, in an active type of
> > language, how does the coreferencing/anaphore
> binding
> > work in a sentence such as:
> >  "they saw the dog and __ ran"?
>
> The way the syntactic pivot works is an autonomous
> system from
> that for case marking.  I would guess most Split-S
> languages do
> not have Split-S pivots.
>
> > Also, in a language which uses topic prominent
> > sentences (like Chinese) but has absolute/ergative
> > case marking, how should the semantics of the
> above
> > sentence work assuming "they" to be the topic and
> > ergative?
>
> Depends.  Is this language also pro-drop?
What I've come up with so far is a polypersonal verb
system that marks for subj, obj, ind. obj and
benefactor/malefactor. Thus, NPs tend to get dropped a
lot, although I wouldn't say it's a rule. The system
is more one of agreement than pronominal verb
arguments.
 Intransitive verbs agree with the person/number of
the absolute argument. Transitives do likewise and
carry a possesive pronoun agreeing with the ergative.
A special inflection shows 1st or 2nd person indirect
object. Another shows whether the whole action was
carried out as an end in itself or to the benefit or
detriment of another person.

>
> I'm more familiar with the way topicality works in
> Korean.  There,
> the topic marker and the subject marker are in
> complimentary
> distribution.  You can mark the subject as topic, or
> as subject,
> but not both.  Thus:
>
>    (a) They-TOP saw the dog-ABS and ___ ran.
>    (b) They-ERG saw the dog-ABS and ___ ran.
>    (c) *They-TOP-ERG saw the dog-ABS and ___ ran.
>
> (Korean's nom/acc, but you get the idea.)
  If I understand this right, "they" is the assumed
argument of "ran"?

This seems to be a bit like the system I have toyed
with using. The topic is not marked with its own case,
and whenever an argument is not explicitly stated in
the verbal aggreement, the topic is assumed to fill
that role. This is most apparent with 3rd person
topics. Thus,

 Bob-topic me-give-it-their means They give it to me
(and Bob perhaps owned or made whatever they gave)
while,
 Bob-topic give-it-their means They give it to Bob.

  Similarly for benefactor--whenever a verb occurs in
a sentence with expressed topic and *is not marked*
for benefaction, the topic is assumed to be the
benefactor or malefactor. I've thought of including an
inflection indicating a nontopic ind. obj as well.
 Now, in a sentence like:

 They saw the dog and __ ran,

 "ran" is intransitiev, thus

  (1) saw-it-their dog-abs they-erg ran-it
                    or
  (2) they-topic saw-it-their dog-abs ran-it

 In sentence 1, it seems to me the dog did the running
since absolutes govern intransitives, but I feel that
the topicality of "they" in sentence 2 might somehow
override this and make "they" be the understood
subject of "ran". In order to get back to the meaning
of sentence 1, I would say:

  dog-topic saw-it-their they-erg ran-it

 Or is my logic completely shot here and I need to go
back to the drawing board?
                       Thanks,
                             Travis
 =========================================================================
> Thomas Wier	       "I find it useful to meet my
> subjects personally,
> Dept. of Linguistics    because our secret police
> don't get it right
> University of Chicago   half the time." --
> octogenarian Sheikh Zayed of
> 1010 E. 59th Street     Abu Dhabi, to a French
> reporter.
> Chicago, IL 60637
>


		
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