Re: THEORY: What, Besides Verbs, Can Take Two Or More Arguments?

>In English, a few prepositions, such as "between", take two arguments;
>these arguments both play exactly the same role.
Hmm...
"Between you and me"
"Between me and you"
Seems to me that there might be a slight difference between the topicality
of the arguments: the focus would have to be the first one.


>What about English words like "than" and "as"?  What lexical category do
>they belong to?  Are they requiring more than one argument, as "than" seems
>to, and "as" sometimes seems to? Are the arguments equal in role?
>Tom H.C. in MI
Isn't the equality of the arguments easy to test? Just swap 'em and see if
the phrase's meaning changes.
The only instance of "as" taking equal arguments would be its use as a
synchronity conjunction: "It roared as it ran" <> "It ran as it roared". Tho
IMO this exhibits a similar topicality difference as "between" does.
But used eg causally, the inequality is more apparent: "It floated as it was
lighter than water" <> "It was lighter than water as it floated". Let alone
the nonsensical results obtained from eg "Funny as Batman as a gardener". :)

"Than" then: As I see it, it's used to mark something as a comparision
point, so the arguments are inherently inequal. "Look there rather than
here" <> "Look here rather than there"

Anyway... it's apparent that prepositions and conjunctions can take two
arguments. Next, how about adjectives, adverbs etc? Imagine a language with
"passive" and "active" comparatives, which translated "Make it better" and
"Liquorice is better than fudge" with two different forms of "better".
And the prolative case (meaning route, means of transportation, etc) could
be used for an example of a bivalent noun - it might in some languages
require both an origin and a destination. To generalize, any case bearing
the function of a trivalent conjunction (or preposition?) would generate
bivalent nouns.

More later if I think of anything...

John Vertical

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