Re: to be different

On Friday 19 January 2007 00:13, Jeffrey Jones wrote:

> I'm having trouble coming up with the morphosyntax for translating "to be
> different from" in NYSEC. My problem is that this doesn't seem to fit any
> existing argument structure category. It has two arguments: what's
> different and what it's different from. It's not transitive and neither
> argument is a possessor. The way English does it won't work either. Any
> ideas?
Why don't you just make it transitive based on "to differ", even if one may
argue that it's not an action verb?

In fact, it would even be ambitransitive, i.e. transitive or intransitive
depending on context.

An apple differs-(from) an orange. <-- transitive

That differs. <-- intransitive

Or else, you can consider that "different" is a comparative. To be bigger,
smaller, more somehow or less somehow, etc, all mean the same thing: to be
different. You just have to use the same preposition than for a comparison.

The orange is bigger than the apple.

An orange is different *than* an apple.

Or else again, to let you find a solution by yourself: What did you do about
all these adjectives/verbs that require a preposition?

To be opposed to, to be considered as, to depend on, to act as, etc,
etc. "To be different from" can simply behave the same.

--
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Remi Villatel
maxilys_@_tele2.fr
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