Re: Looking for a case: counting

En réponse à Philippe Caquant :


>But I find it hard to agree with your proposition:
>"When a prepositional (or: disguised accusative)
>phrase complements the predicate, it's an adverbial
>concept.". Do you mean that in a sentence like *I've
>been living for many years in the woods with wolves*,
>'many years', 'the woods' and 'wolves' are all
>adverbial concepts ???
Indeed. Why not? They complete and define the meaning of the verb, and none 
is necessary for the sentence. That's pretty much all "adverbial" means.

>  In that case, nearly everything
>could be adverbial.
Indeed, and nearly everything is.

>  As to me, these are all
>circumstants: 'for many years' is temporal, 'in the
>woods' is local, and 'with wolves' is comitative.
And what makes "circumstants" different from adverbials? Syntactically, the 
two notions overlap ("hier": "yesterday" is an adverb but a circumstant 
under your definition, it's temporal), so there's no reason they could be 
distinct semantically speaking. So many languages mix the two syntactic 
concepts in different ways from others (anyway, syntactically the concept 
of "adverb" is just a catch-all with no real contents. Check Tim May's post 
with his quote of "Describing Morphosyntax") that there is just nothing 
pointing out at a semantic distinction.

Also, isn't it strange that you describe "for many years" as a circumstant 
while you treat "many times" as an adverb. Semantically, the difference 
between them is so minimal (if "many times" is a "process quantifier", then 
so is "for many years". It very much quantifies the process as on-going and 
begun in the past, and in many languages would be rendered as an aspect 
mark on the verb) that putting such a strong distinction in between is just 
not justified.

>By 'adverbial concepts', I mean concepts modifying the
>way the verbal concept itself (the core) is conceived,
>like 'slowly', 'gracefully', 'exactly',
>'progressively', 'all at once', 'regularly', 'hardly',
>'strongly', 'peacefully', etc.
And in what way is the concept (the core) differently modified by an adverb 
like "gracefully" than by a complement like "with a hammer"? Just point 
*exactly* (in no vague terms) the difference, and make it so that it 
accounts for the whole distinction you make. And don't say that it's 
because you "feel" that way. Feeling has no place in science. Facts have. I 
want facts. You didn't give any yet.


>So clearly, this has all to be examined more
>carefully, without any a priori, and always with the
>necessary distinction between such or such natlang
>syntax, and general semantics.
I wish you could apply that to yourself. Admitting the absence of semantic 
distinction between adverbials (as you define them) and circumstants is 
*exactly* the result of such an examination without a priori. And it 
*doesn't* mix syntax and semantics, since it says exactly that a syntactic 
distinction present in languages like English and French is just not 
present at the semantic level. That you can argue against it by complaining 
that we are mixing syntax and semantics is beyond me...

Christophe Grandsire.
http://rainbow.conlang.free.fr
You need a straight mind to invent a twisted conlang. 

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