Re: What would you call this?

Hi!

Tim May <butsuri@...> writes:
> Andreas Johansson wrote at 2003-06-17 22:11:25 (+0200)
...
>  > How would you analyze these?
>  >
> Shouldn't these be the other way around?  I mean, I'm probably not
> best placed to say, but they look like an antipassive (demoting
> patient) and passive (demotng agent) respectively.
>
> I don't know that it's meaningful to say that they don't change a
> valency - reimazo takes two core arguments and reimolazo only one,
> yes?  What does "valency" mean beyond that?
I have the same nomenclature problem with my new conlang sketch S7.
It also changes the head when supplements are missing.  However, it is
distinguished whether the supplement is only syntactically missing or
whether the head cannot even be provided with one.  The former
category I called 'syntactical valency', the latter 'semantical
valency'.  Maybe these are not really good names in acccord with what
linguists call them.

I feel that 'semantical valency' change is quite like a voice change.
(Actually the change may be large enough to lexicalise it, because 'to
show' may be changed to 'to appear' by this).  Missing an agent
(semantically) for example is quite like middle voice in Ancient
Greek.  Missing in agent syntactically merely indicates that the
discouse makes clear what it really is or that is is not important,
but existing.

Back to the original posting, I'd say those are 'syntactical valency
markers'.  If it has an official name, I'll change all my docu on S7
immediately, of course. :-)

**Henrik