Re: Core Cases (was Re: Ditransitivity (again!))

On Mon, 2 Feb 2004 11:55:33 -0800, Philippe Caquant <herodote92@...>
wrote:
> Syntactic arguments always seem questionnable to me.
> When we say for ex that the verb “to love” requires
> Agent and (Thing acted upon / Patient / Object) :
>
> - if the point of view is purely syntactic, then this
> is not true. The French sentence “J’aime.” looks all
> right, grammatically, to me. It means “I am in love”.
English is not the same as French.
"Aimer" is not the same word as "to love", so we shouldnt be surprised to
see a different syntax.
[Perhaps it does not in French, but in English the intransitive of "love"
seems unnatural or quite archaic.]

Regardless of the *semantic* valence of a verb, which may be universal,
the *syntactic* valence is tied to the word itself.

For another example, "eat" and "dine" are synonymous, but "dine" cannot
take a direct object--even though the meaning of the word requires there
must be one, to include it in "dine" requires a separate phrase, generally
"on X".


        *Muke!
--
http://frath.net/                  E jer savne zarjé mas ne
http://kohath.livejournal.com/     Se imné koone'f metha
http://kohath.deviantart.com/      Brissve mé kolé adâ.