Re: Marking and Imperatives
| From: | Nik Taylor <fortytwo@...> |
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| Date: | Thursday, October 14, 1999, 23:14 |
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Ed Heil wrote:
> So there's no reason that the first person would be equally unmarked
> in the past tense; in the past tense, the verb is not a performative.
Hmm, I didn't think about that. That's a good point there. In
nonpresent tenses, it's a description of an act that was done/will be
done.
On the other hand, other performatives don't allow "I" to be dropped,
you can't say "Command you to go", so it still seems to be unique to the
verb "thank".
> I guess I'm not sure what the theoretical difference is between a
> "mere exception" which is a "contraction of a common phrase" and a
> genuine example of morphological unmarkedness.
Well, if it were morphological unmarkedness, one would expect other
similar verbs to drop the "I".
Still, that introduces an interesting question: *are* there languages
where 1st person singular is unmarked in performative verbs?
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