Re: Existential clauses

--- Carsten Becker <post@...> wrote:
> On Sat, 10 Jul 2004 15:10:07 +0200, Carsten Becker
> <post@...>
> wrote:
<snip>
>
> I thought about this and now I think I know what's
> the difference. Here are
> examples:
>
>      1)     You are happy.
>      2)     You are in the garden.
>
<snip>

Being the computer science type, and having no formal
linguistic training, I tend to think of these as ways
of specifying the state of an object with respect to
some attribute, where the name of the attribute is
implied by the state.  For example:

     1) You are happy.
        Your state-of-mind attribute = happy.

     2) You are in the garden.
        Your location attribute = in-garden.

     3) You are a dentist.
        Your occupation attribute = dentist.

     4) You are welcome here.
        Your here.admissibility attribute = welcome.

     5) You father's name is Fred.
        Your male-parent-name attribute = Fred.

Think of "you" as being an object with numerous
possible attributes such as "temperature", "location",
"age", "hair color", "state of mind", "occupation",
"IQ", "male parent name", "number of digits on left
hand", and so on.   Each statement of the type "You
are X", or "Your X is Y" implicitly or explicitly
states the value of one of those attributes.

--gary