Re: Trigger language?

On Fri, Jan 24, 2003 at 11:24:22PM +0100, vaksje wrote:
[snip]
> Affirmative. :) When I thought of subject/object, I only imagined a way of
> assigning them based on a sentence's translation. I reckoned it was okay to
> first analyze a phrase, transform it into an I.E. accusative model and then
> assign subject or object. Thus the syntactic case would have a different
> function in different phrases when transformed. Anyhow, a direct analysis
> seems much better. :))
[snip]

In the case of Ebisedian, it may not even be possible to transform a given
sentence into an accusative model. The fact that "active" and "passive"
sentences are identical makes it hard to do the transformation without
losing information or introducing information that wasn't in the original.
For example:
        eb0'   byy'jh  mang3'     pii'z3du.
        I(org) give(v) horse(cvy) man(rcp)
        "I give a horse to the man."

Here, going according to the English translation at least, the subject is
"I", the object is "horse", the indirect object is "man". But if you elide
one word:
        byy'jh  mang3'     pii'z3du.
        give(v) horse(cvy) man(rcp)
        "A horse was given to the man."

Now the subject is "horse", the indirect object is "man". This may seem to
be still OK, except ... that depending on the context, it could be that
we're just leaving out the word _eb0'_ ("I") because it is already
understood. In which case, the *proper* English translation is "I(implied)
give the horse to the man", where horse is not the subject but the object.

The problem is, the exact same sentence in another context can only be
understood in English as a passive. So you have a contradiction: is
"horse" the subject or the object?

Also, one should also consider that another possible translation is "The
man was given a horse". I believe this is an anti-passive construction?
Not sure... but at any rate, you can see that there are multiple ways to
translate the same Ebisedian sentence, each of which yields a different,
possibly contradictory, assignment of subject/object.


T

--
If we don't succeed we run the risk of failure. -- Dan Quayle

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