Re: Questions Concerning Grammar

--- Paul Bennett <paul-bennett@...> wrote:

> On Thu, 29 Jul 2004 18:30:50 -0700, william drewery
> <will65610@...>
> wrote:
>
> > languages with agent-patient systems
>
> I don't understand. Surely every language has agents
> and patients, at some
> level?
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Paul
>
 I'm sorry for the ambiguity. I meant an *active*
language in the sense of one that can mark the NP of
an intransitive verb as either subj or obj depending
on semantics. My brain wasn't working full throttle
and "agent-patient" is what it came up with.
  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"?

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?
       Thanks,
             Travis



		
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