Re: Existential clauses

--- Carsten Becker <post@...> wrote:
>
> Argh, why must I always cause confusion?
I don't think you cause confusion, you bring confusion
to light, that's something different. This is the
first step to solve a problem :-)

> ---------------{ QUOTATION }---------------
>
> From: David Peterson
> Sent: Sunday, July 11, 2004 12:45 AM
> Subject: Re: Existential clauses
>
> I'm still not sure what you mean by that.  As far as
> I'm concerned, in
> "The man is on the lawn", "is on the lawn" is a
> description of the
> man -- >
> [...]
I would not say so. I would say: there is a concept
called "the man", and there is a concept called "the
lawn", and I rely them by means of a third concept,
which is something like "to be on", and so I get a
predicate, or a relation (x R y).

>
> From: Philippe Caquant
> Sent: Sunday, July 11, 2004 07:57 AM (GMT+1) <-- O.o
> So early!
'Le monde appartient à ceux qui se lèvent tôt' (French
proverb: the world belongs to the ones who stay
early).

> Subject: Re: Existential clauses
>
>  > - existence, or presence : Il est un pays cher à
> mon
>  > coeur (old style, seldom used by now). Et la
> lumière
>  > fut (literary style).
>
> Ack, my French is too bad for that. What does that
> mean in English?
- There is a country I love ('dear to my heart').
- And there was light. (from Genesis : Let there be
Light ! And there was Light)
I feel there is a difference between the concepts of
(absolute) existence, and of presence.

>  > - identity. Ex: L'assassin, c'est le notaire.
> Ceci est
>  > ma maison. Paris est la capitale de la France.
>  > - instantiation (sort-of) : Un moineau est un
> oiseau.
>  > Je suis un homme.
>
> Maybe this is where I'd use "to be"? Nevertheless,
> as David said, here
> what follows "to be" is also an adverbial.
Huh ? I find it hard to understand that word
'adverbial' here. It's a 'sort-of' relation, a kind of
a definition, or an element of a class, or whatever
you might call it (1). 'Adverbial' normally refers to
a verbal concept, like in 'Colorless green ideas sleep
furiously' : 'furiously' is adverbial, it (strangely)
completes the verb "to sleep".

In "L'assassin, c'est le notaire", the idea is: you
were reading a detective novel, and you had an idea of
the killer, and another idea of the notary, there were
two different characters for you, and suddenly you
discover that they are the same man ! So you discover
that two different concepts are in fact only one. This
I call identity : different names for a unique
concept.

>  > - intrinsic quality : Ces cerises sont rouges.
> Les
>  > basketteurs sont souvent grands. Ce problème est
>  > difficile (see NB)
>  > - temporary, reversible state : Elle est malade.
>  > - transitory, irreversible state : Il est encore
>  > jeune.
>
> That's where you'd omit "to be" in Ayeri.
Yes, in Russian too: On ech'chjo molodoj (my personal
transcription).
>
(1) I thought about what Ray Brown said. If I'm not
mistaken, he said that even if by "When shall we be
adults at last ?" I meant mankind, he nevertheless
felt offended, because he happens to belong to mankind
(me too, BTW). True, Ray Brown is an element of the
class of "human beings" (at least I suppose so, having
not met him physically yet). But one should consider
that inside a class, some elements may not share every
property of the class. There are always exceptions.
See the well-known examples about the ostrich or the
penguin, which are not very convincing examples of the
"bird" class. This would bring us to the theory of the
prototype... maybe not today.



=====
Philippe Caquant

"High thoughts must have high language." (Aristophanes, Frogs)


		
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