Re: Sundry thoughts (was: Re: THEORY nouns and cases)
From: | <jcowan@...> |
Date: | Thursday, April 29, 2004, 20:36 |
Douglas Koller, Latin & French scripsit:
> Likewise, "See ya, Mom. I'm off to the movies and'll be back at
> 1:00AM." "Wrrrronnng!" ("Wrongo" sounds better, I guess.)
Well, "Wrong!" can be used when the interlocutors are not equivalent in
power, but that is a special case.
> Does "ba" really "front" the direct object? To be sure, it brings it
> closer to the head of the sentence, but doesn't necessarily afford
> the emphasis I normally assocoiate with fronted direct objects.
Right. I was using the word "front" merely in the sense of "bring to
the front", without any connotation of special semantics. My contention
was that you *cannot* use "ba" to bring just any old direct object to
the front.
> Which brings us to the word "disposal". I was going to respectfully
> beg to differ, but after consulting the all-knowing Li & Thompson
> (which, I presume, is where you got the term from),
Yup.
--
Where the wombat has walked, John Cowan <jcowan@...>
it will inevitably walk again. http://www.ccil.org/~cowan
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