Re: Replying to Rodlox (Re: Spanish-related question ((q)SVO ?) and obliques)

David Peterson wrote:

> "A hot dog was eaten (by me)."
>
> ...only "a hot dog" is a core argument.   "By me" is now considered
> an oblique--that is, it is *not* a core argument of the verb.   In
> English, it isn't even necessary (a clue for whether or not something
> is an oblique in English).   Obliques work differently in different
> languages, but they tend to not be core arguments of the verb, and
> tend to be marked differently than other arguments (for example,
> core arguments of English verbs tend not to be marked, whereas
> the oblique must always be preposed by "by").
I think as a general rule, nom. and acc. are considered the "core" cases,
all others are considered "oblique".
>
> Rodlox also wrote:
>
> <<minor question - what are 'GB' and 'WH' ?>>
>
> GB stands for Government and Binding--a syntactic framework I
> was taught recently.   This fact isn't worth remembering.
Thanks, I wondered about that, too.

> So, in Arabic, for example,
> you have "maa" meaning "what" and "man" meaning "who", and those are
> WH-words.   All yes/no questions, though, begin with the particle "hal"
> (similar
> to your "que").   So, an example:
>
> hal tatakalam al-?/arabiija?
> /Q you-speak Arabic/
> "Do you speak Arabic?"
>
> "hal" above, like "que", just lets the speaker know that the phrase is
> a question.
Does "hal" mean anything else in its own right, or is this just a
coincidental homophone? It occurs (borrowed I'm sure) in Malay/Indonesian,
meaning "case, instance, (indefinite) thing, affair"-- e.g. pada hal itu 'in
that case', hal ini berat sekali 'this matter is very serious' etc.

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