Re: "do" captures agent+subject

Quoting Henrik Theiling <theiling@...>:


> > I don't agree.  "The Wicked Witch of the West melts" is a sentence whose
> > subject is the WWotW, but as an answer to "What does the WWotW do?" it
> > is not felicitous.  "What does X do?" marks X as both subject and agent,
> > and if either is not true, it doesn't work.
>
> Really?  Interesting!  Then there is a difference between German
> and English:
>   Die Hexe schmilzt.
>   Was tut die Hexe?
>   Schmelzen.
This, tangentially, illustrates a difference 'tween German and Swedish; in the
later you had this:

Häxan smälter.
Vad gör häxan?
Smälter.

That is, with a present-tense verb in the answer. An infinitive would be
totally out of the window.

Back on topic, the verb _att göra_ "to make, to do" normally does imply
agency - if my feeling for English can be trusted, rather more strongly
than "to do" does.

                                                     Andreas