Re: Syntaxy-Turvy (long, crazy)

On Wed, 28 Jun 2000 11:43:47 -0400, Ed Heil <edheil@...> wrote:

>>How do you handle three participants' sentences, like "I give the dog a
>bone"?
>
>Ah, yes, I think those are called (at least by some people)
"ditransitives."
>
>Perhaps I could replace them with a sentence with three verbs: Action,
>Passion, and Intention.  (X happened to me, and I did Y in order that Z
might
>happen)
<...>

Note that there are verbs describing situations with more than 3
participants.

OTOH, many isolating languages allow only one nominal object for one
verb. To translate Christophe's example, you need two transitive verbs
and form a chain of them: I giv(ing)-to dog give bone ('give-to' and
'give' are different lexemes; 'give-to' works very much like a
preposition 'to' or 'for'). The problem of prepositions is solved
thus, too. I think there is more than one way to embed this system
into your reverse syntax.

Interestingly, it seems that verbs tend to denote dynamic situations
with potentially several participants, whereas nouns more typically
point to relatively stable entities with usually only few features
attributed to them in each occurrence. So verbal syntax is usually
richer and requires some means to distinguish more roles. Can this be
reversed, I wonder?


Basilius