On Fri, Apr 11, 2008 at 5:16 PM, ROGER MILLS <rfmilly@...> wrote:
> 3.a possessive perfect formed with 'have' plus a passive participle (e.g.
> English I have said);
> ** "possessive" ???? maybe meant "periphrastic"?
I think "possessive" in this case means the use of a verb that in its
non-auxiliary form refers to possession.
> 6.a prominence of anticausatives in inchoative-causative pairs;
I think this has something to do with the use of the same form in
pairs like "the window broke" (inchoative) vs "he broke the window"
(causative) ??
> 8.verbal negation with a negative indefinite;
> **What is a "negative indefinite"?
Pronoun category. "nobody", "nowhere", etc. vs positive indefinite
"somebody", "somewhere". Some languages negate predicates with
negative indefinites (Russian: Никто не пришел, nobody came).
> 9.particle comparatives in comparisons of inequality;
> **does this mean like "plus, más" ? Engl. and I think Germ. have both
> these (more/most, mehr) as well as -er/-est forms?? Romance langs. retain a
> few synthetic comparatives (mejor, mieux) and Span/Ital retain the Latin
> *-issimus superlative
I think you're right about this one. Analytic vs synthetic.
> 10.equative constructions based on adverbial-relative clause structures;
> **Wha??
"as X as", maybe?
> 11.subject person affixes as strict agreement markers;
> **OK, but Engl. has only 3d pers. -s; distinguished in French mainly in the
> spelling........
French requires the pronoun, though. Remember the Grandsirian reanalysis...
--
Mark J. Reed <markjreed@...>