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Re: comment: four-participants (on-topic, even! but long)

From:Muke Tever <alrivera@...>
Date:Wednesday, July 10, 2002, 21:22
Doug Dee wrote:
>> Well, I was reading more of Describing Morphosyntax, and I'm almost sure I >> read a bit about a language grammaticalizing "contrary to expectations" and >> "according to expectations" as verbal inflections, and not just verbs on
their
>> own. >> >>But now I can't find it. I thought I saw it near the section on miratives,
but
>>it appears to have vanished entirely. > >It's on page 255, in section 9.6: > >". . . in many languages there is a distinction between the expression of >information that is surprising versus that which is unsurprising or
expected." No, that's not the bit I remember... I read, appended to an example, something like what I wrote, but it had the name of the language that did it, and it may have listed the actual morphemes. It's entirely possible it could be an invention of my unfevered brain... (Like the time my teacher asked us why the Mariner shot the Albatross, which left me confused, because I had read in at least an entire extra stanza about that...) *Muke! -- http://www.frath.net/