Re: Reflexive & Reciprocal Marked on the Verb

Philip Newton wrote:
> On Wed, Sep 3, 2008 at 03:30, Matthew <ave.jor@...> wrote:
>
>> I know that French sometimes uses the number agreement to disambiguate, but
>> I can't think of a context right now.
>> I know for sure it doesn't use it to disambiguate for reciprocity vs
>> reflexivity though because
>> *nous s'embrassons
>> *nous nous embrasse
>>
>
> Neither of those looks like grammatical French to me.
>
> Are you sure those are the correct forms?
>
> (I thought that "s'" was only used with third person subjects, and
> that the verb must always agree with the expressed subject.)
>
> Cheers,
>
Neither of them are grammatical French,  hence the asterisk of
*ungrammaticissity
*I good dog get go
I went and got a good dog

The grammatical sentence would be :
nous     nous             embrass-ons
we         ourselves     kiss-1PL.PRS.IND

and your kinda right, s' is used with grammatical third persons (note
that in many dialects /on/ is a first person semantically but  a third
person grammatically. on dors : someone is sleeping / we are sleeping. )
thus :
*nous m'embrassons (first person singular reflexive, where there should
be a plural)
*nous nous embrasse (verb agrees with the wrong number).

My point was that French /didn't/ work the way I suggested in that
context, it only uses number to disambiguate in something to do with the
pronoun "leur", but damned if I can remember which meaning, or what
construction :(

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