Re: Ditransitivity (again!)

Quoting Philippe Caquant <herodote92@...>:

> I understand that the core arguments are those which
> are logically requested by the meaning of the verb. It
> is not a question of syntactic cases, but of semantic
> actants. Every verb has its own scheme.
I think this is a _highly_ idiosyncratic understanding of core arguments.

> Of course, you may produce a sentence like "I sold my
> car", this is grammatically correct, but the
> information is incomplete. The interlocutor would be
> right to ask: "to whom ?", and also "for what price
> ?", because these are parts of the concept "to sell".
> Some arguments seem to be closer or further from the
> "core". (Other questions like "When ? Where ? Why ?
> etc. are not relied to actance, but to circumstance.
> They are more peripheric than actants).
>
> You may even say "This car was sold", but hardly "I
> sold", except in case you just explained what you are
> talking about in your last sentence (meaning: I sold
> it).
>
> The syntactic cases are not relevant.
They would be, if you were speaking about arguments, which the claim was
about, and not about actants.

> They change from
> one language to another. In English and French, you
> follow "somebody" (accusative), but in German, you
> follow "to somebody" (jemandEM folgen, dative).
> Instrumental has various meanings in Russian, in fact
> it is a mix of different more primitive concepts, put
> together (ex: ja rabotaju injenerom, I work as an
> engineer - nothing to do with the concept of
> "instrument").
>
> So to me the notion of "oblique cases" has no meaning.
> Only the semantic roles make sense.
>
> The idea of a maximal number of arguments hardwired is
> interessant, regarding the human mind, but it may not
> if we consider a computer program. Nothing can prevent
> to build a "to sell-function" using a dozen of
> arguments, ten of them being facultative for instance.
The big majority of humans are able to process a sentence like "I sold the car
to Bob for 2000€ yesterday" just fine, act'ly Since you've defined away core
arguments in the sense the original claim took them, the idea of a maximum
number of them should _not_ be interesting to you.

                                            Andreas