Re: THEORY: NATLANGS: Pro-Forms

On 5/24/06, Kit La Touche <kit@...> wrote:
> as the purpose of proforms *seems* to be to
> allow grammatical sentences that don't repeat all the common ground,
> and adjectives are essentially optional, it would be of small use:
> consider, talking about 'the red dog', would you say 'the pro-adj
> dog' or just 'the dog'?
In that sentence, yes.

But consider something like "Bob has a big shaggy red-haired dog and
Bill has [one like that], too", where you might like to repeat the
adjective without mentioning it explicitly.

"Like that" is sort of a pro-adverb in English, for example -- "I
always write my sentences from left to right, and my little sister
writes them _like that_, too."

Cheers,
--
Philip Newton <philip.newton@...>