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Re: The meaning of -moH

daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (David Trimboli)
Thu Oct 8 16:42:07 2009

Date: Thu, 08 Oct 2009 16:39:14 -0400
From: David Trimboli <david@trimboli.name>
In-reply-to: <998850.16341.qm@web82607.mail.mud.yahoo.com>
To: tlhingan-hol@kli.org
Errors-to: tlhingan-hol-bounce@kli.org
Reply-to: tlhingan-hol@kli.org

Terrence Donnelly wrote:
> --- On Thu, 10/8/09, David Trimboli <david@trimboli.name> wrote:
>> Overall, I agree with the point: there is some evidence that
>> syntactic differences exist among verbs, though the evidence is not
>>  conclusive, or even necessarily convincing. If true, verbs may
>> fall into one of three classes: verbs of action that can take
>> objects; verbs of action that cannot take objects; and verbs of
>> quality, which cannot take objects.
> 
> Really, just two classes: one in which the subject performs the
> action on an object, and one in which the subject experiences the
> action or the quality of the verb.

No, those are semantic roles. The syntactic classes are defined by the 
verbs' relationships with other words, not by any meaning inherent in 
the verbs. The difference between "performer" (agent or force) and 
"experiencer" (patient, theme, or experiencer) is a semantic difference. 
Syntactically, <subject> always does <verb>, regardless of whether the 
subject is performing <verb> or experiencing <verb>.

-- 
SuStel
tlhIngan Hol MUSH
http://trimboli.name/mush




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