Re: THEORY: Adpositional Heads

Isidora Zamora sikyal:

> At 04:52 PM 9/10/03 -0700, you wrote:
> >Isidora Zamora wrote:
> > > In this particular case, the prepositional phrase is adverbial.  It
> > > modifies "saw."  I saw a man *where*?  I saw a man *in the house.*
> >
> >That doesn't clarify anything.  You don't say whether the act of seeing
> >occurs where the seeing person is or where the seen person is or where
> >they both are.  Maybe your native language has a built-in supposition of
> >where seeing occurs -- but English doesn't!
> [snip]
>
> I don't think that it is possible to resolve the ambiguity of this example
> in English, at least not without jumping through some extrordinary
> hoops.  But I also have the instinct that most English speakers will never
> notice the ambiguity, unless they are called upon to formally parse the
> sentence in some manner (such as diagramming.)
>
> Does the sentence "I saw a man in the house." create any ambiguity in other
> languages as to whether the prepositional phrase is adverbial or
> adjectival?  Is this ambiguity a problem?  If so, how can it be disambiguated?
I think that this kind of ambiguity is common across languages, and
inevitable in any language that allows PP's to occur in NP's and VP's.
However, the ambiguity is rarely severe, and sense will usually take care
of it.

Nonetheless, Yivrian disambiguates these by requiring a different case for
noun objects in adverbial PP's vs. adjectival PP's. An unorthodox
solution, but it removes most cases of ambiguity.


--
Jesse S. Bangs jaspax@u.washington.edu
http://students.washington.edu/jaspax/
http://students.washington.edu/jaspax/blog

Jesus asked them, "Who do you say that I am?"

And they answered, "You are the eschatological manifestation of the ground
of our being, the kerygma in which we find the ultimate meaning of our
interpersonal relationship."

And Jesus said, "What?"