4)
Discuss the problems raised by the
paired sentences below:
a)
I have eaten a hot meal.
I have eaten.
b)
She is smoking cigars.
She is smoking.
c)
She is writing a letter to her
friends.
She is writing to her friends.
d)
She is writing a novel.
She is writing.
e)
She drinks a lot of wine.
She drinks.
We can observe in these examples
that some verbs allow an argument to be omitted.
When the argument is not represented
overtly we still interpret the sentence as
referring to an activity involving two arguments. a) for examples says: I
have eaten.
We
interpret this one as “I have eaten something”. There is an extended meaning in
the second sentences. The first ones are much more specific in meaning.
There is
a relatively small class of verbs in English which allow the direct object to
be omitted
Discuss the semantic effect of object omission in the sentences
below:
f)
She is expecting an important visitor.
She is expecting.
g)
The teachers kissed the students.
The teachers kissed.
h)
The children are washing their dolls.
The children are washing.
i)
John and Mary met Jane in the park.
John and Mary met in the park.
Semantic
restrictions on the implicit argument cannot be derived in any obvious way from
the structure. The meaning is between both sentences is completely different
than those given in a – e. Omissibility of an object is kind of arbitrary, it
is not predictable. “Eat” for example allows for an understood object while
“devour”, which is closely similar in meaning, does not.
Louise
is eating.
*Louise
is devouring.
The
same applies to desert and abandon.
Taken
from the book: Non-overt subjects are not constrained by the lexical properties
of the verbs whose arguments they are. A non-finite verb may have a non-overt
subject. This is a productive rule.But implicit objects are constrained.
A
lexical rule allows the object of a certain number of transitive verbs in
English to be implicit, while syntactic rules require implicit subjects for
non-finite sentences.