Re: Questions Concerning Grammar

From:    John Leland <Lelandconlang@...>
In a message dated 7/30/04 9:58:55 PM Pacific Daylight Time,
trwier@UCHICAGO.EDU writes:

> << '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.) >>
>
> To increase the understanding of someone who knows some Korean but
> is less familiar with linguistic terminology,could you put those
> sentences,or at least the markers, into Korean?
IIRC:

(a) They-nun the dog-lul saw and (they) ran.
(b) They-ka the dog-lul saw and (they) ran.
(c) *They-ka-nun the dog-lul saw and (they) ran.

 =========================================================================
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