Re: THEORY: Bivalent Intransitive Verbs

On 8/2/05, Tom Chappell <tomhchappell@...> wrote:

Does anyone on the list know anything about natlangs with Bivalent 
> Intransitive verbs?
> 
I think I may have mentioned it in a previous conversation of ours, but 
Manam has something very much like this.

Verbs are categorized by their minimum valency, but each verb may take, in 
addition, one extra argument that is *not* the direct object. (That is, does 
not fill the "patient" agreement slot on the verb.) What role this argument 
fills depends on the verb -- it's not always, for example, Beneficiary. 
(Maybe it's not ever Benificiary, which has its own way of being marked on 
the verb, but I don't remember.) As I had mentioned, it's a bit of a 
crapshoot as to which role is realized as what object for a given verb.

And, as mentioned, in 3-argument bivalent (transitive) verbs, the speaker 
may choose which non-subject argument to treat as a "Patient" and which to 
treat as the "extra" argument via the interesting extension of the 
transitivizing suffix -a?.

This is not a case of a *required* 2-argument intransitive verb, but worth 
mentioning.

-----------------

This reminds me of an oddity in the agreement system of Kokota that you'll 
find interesting. (Thanks, Roger; I don't know if anyone else made use of 
your link, but I studied it in depth.)

Kokota agreement works like so: There's a hierarchy of semantic roles 
something like Agent/Stative > Experiencer > Location/Source/Goal > Patient. 
("Statives" are the subjects of stative verbs.) The subject slot will 
reference the (non-oblique) argument that is highest in this hierarchy, and 
may not reference Patients. The object slot references the highest 
(non-oblique) argument that is not an Agent/Stative. 

A/S E L/S/G P
<--------Sub----------->
<--------Obj--------->

The only thing is, there's no rule against both slots referencing the same 
participant. So with experiential verbs, the experiencer is *both* -- it's 
simultaneously the highest non-patient and the highest non-agent. There are 
also a number of verbs that can either be ordinary-paradigm verbs or 
experiential-paradigm verbs, depending on... hmm, I think the level of 
agency, like a Fluid-S system.

Neat idea: For agreement, make a +HR slot and a +LR slot. When the main 
argument is ABS, it is referenced in *both*.

-- 
Patrick Littell
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