Search results for 'tag:Direct objects tag:Modals' matching tags 'Direct objects' and 'Modals'

Re: the middle voice option

Dawnstorm — Tue, 27 May 2008 08:09:34 GMT

Hi,

I'm really enjoying this. You're making me think.

I'm going to take your points out of sequence. I think I'm still replying to your post; if I misrepresent what you're saying, please correct me.

First, the summary of what I'm going to say: A lot depends on theory, and how you frame your terms. To me, ergativity in English is primarily a side topic to voice, and the only "marked" voice in English is the passive. All others rely on semantics and indirect evidence (such as your very detailled and useful post about the transitivity system in English). BUT: how do you frame the evidence there is systematically? In syntax? Make it part of the lexicon? In other words, what exactly is it that the term "ergative" adds to a combination of transitivity and lexical tagging? I'm still thinking about your suggestion to speak of "ergative structures" rather than "ergative verbs". This is an interesting approach, de-emphasising the lexicon in that respect; but I'm trying to ignore it for this post, mostly because I'm not done thinking it through.

Second, I think I've used the term "semantic" very loosely in my other post. There's reference, and then there's cognitive framing. (Or content and point of view.) The cognitive framing is harder to get at and interpret, mostly because these things aren't always immediately visible. We're talking about "ergative structures" in English, or the "middle voice", because we've noticed these constructions in other languages (Basque for ergativity; Ancient Greek for Middle voice; etc.). That is we have to strip away the structure and get down to the point-of-view meaning that the structures imply. And then we have to go back to English and look for expressions of said point-of-view meaning in this language. (Something similar is going on when linguists are probing "shall/will" along the lines of futurity/modality, within the discussion whether English has a future tense or not. The consensus is it doesn't, but the discussion - assuming "will/shall" as tense-modals - has been productive, if not conclusive.) But the thing is this: if you're bringing concepts to a language from outside (which is usual in comparative linguistics) you need an anchor; conventional structural methods - such as your "what syntactic operations yield well-formed usage?" approach - have their limitations. So do semantic (referential or framing). This makes ergativity/unaccusativity hard to think about, before you choose your approach.

Examples follow:

This is about the sentence, "He died a cruel death."

MrPedantic
The object here is a cognate object (it is implied in the verb itself) and thus belongs to a slightly different model. (I would say that it only exists to provide an adverbial opportunity: "he died a cruel death" = "he died in a cruel way".)

I agree that, framing-wise, the object functions much like an adverbial. But it's an "object" in syntax, which has implications that are incompatible with adverbials. Most relevant, here, "die" is now prone to passivisation.

"A cruel death was died," does sound odd (I'll get to it in a minute), but I wouldn't bat an eyelid at "Many deaths were died that night." Interestingly, it's hard to put this into the active voice, mostly because no subject seems appropriate. (?"The Soldiers died many deaths that night."; ?"The army died many deaths that night."...). To me, all the examples I can think of (plural nouns, collective nouns...) don't express the passive meaning. The closest I come is "Many people died that night." Anything else I can think of is of questionable grammaticality.

However, "A cruel death was died," although it sounds odd, doesn't sound ungrammatical in the least (at least not to me). It's also not a semantic problem; I understand the sentence perfectly well, both reference- and framingwise.

The reason, I think, this sounds odd is a pragmatic one. I think this one sounds odd because it's hard to find a context for this utterance that justifies the passive, which is a "marked construction". You generally expect "marked" constructions to be there for a reason. I suspect in the right context the above sentence would be perfectly fine. (It's a matter of Grice's conversational maxims, the maxim of manner, in particular.)

This is where the "frame-semantics" of syntactic constructions become complicated, I think. How do language structures tie in with cognitive structures (e.g. To what extent do we buy the Sapir-Worf hypothesis?)

So, from this I go to self-observation:

MrPedantic
and precisely because of that distinction, I would call "break" here ergative (ex. 5) , and "die" unaccusative (ex. 2).

See, I had the hardest time even to grasp what that meant, not now in this thread, but when I first discovered the distinction. That's because, learning English, I didn't train to see the difference. It wasn't necessary, as ergativity/unaccusativity isn't expressed through syntactic structures, but only indirectly through what operations are possible on the verb; this I pretty much took care off either through lexical list-tagging, or through collocation. If there is a hidden logic to it that I applied in learning, it never became conscious. (It's quite possible that I had a practical knowledge, but no discoursive one of this subject; but why, then, is it so hard to grasp?)

If we go back to the list and sift through the operations there, we'll find that "die" behaves different from "break" in the way we specified. But here's the catch: to apply that structural method, we have to assume that "break" in 5.a = "break" in 5.b = "break" in 5.c etc.; i.e. that "break" is the same lexical item in all these instances. That's because syntax has a hard time to differentiate between "signifier" and "signified", or "sign" and "concept".

Notice, for example, how your 5.a is already the transitive, while systematically it should be the intransitive agentive: 5.a *He broke. (i.e. "He caused/performed the action of breaking." as opposed to "He underwent the process of breaking," which is 5.b, now, and would be 5.c)

So I'd amend this, to:

5a. *He broke.

5b. He broke the plate

5c. The plate broke.

5d. The plate was broken.

5e. The broken plate

5f. The plate broke easily

And the comparison with "die" would be two-fold:

1. = sign; 2. = concept

5.1a He died.

5.2a He killed.

5.1b *He died the man.

5.2b He killed the man

5.1c The man died.

5.2c *The man killed.

5.1d *The man was died.

5.2d The man was killed.

5.1e *The died man [cf. The dead man.]

5.2e The killed man.

5.1f The man died easily. (<-- What's the difference to 5.1a? Should I add an * before it, as this is out of place, here?)

5.2f *The man killed easily. (<-- Is this not available, because 5.1f is available?)

5.1a, 5.1c, and 5.1f seem to be much the same. And this is the problem I have systematising a structural comparison. One possibility, I see is to re-cast 5a as reflexive 1. *He died himself./2. He killed himself. I might try to justify this through dying being a process you undergo, thus if you add an agentive/causative to core meaning (which is not in slot a, but in slot c) the verb becomes by necessity reflexive ("He caused himself to die.")

But these things are all a bit... tentative. I fear it's more rationalised than rational, if you get my drift.

[Interesting aside: you used the term "anticausative" alongside "ergative" and "unaccusative" for break in your thread. Bears repeating, as it's something I'm also still thinking about; a very interesting concept I haven't come across yet.]

MrPedantic
But I find a semantic difference too: the first presents the sign from the point of view of the reader, and the second, from the point of view of the writer.

Now, that's an interesting observation. I'd argue that the semantic difference is not referential (it refers to the same state of affairs), but it's a framing difference. If we view the sign as a proxy for the agent, we're importing the difference of active vs. voice into a construction that's free of the syntactic properties that normally accompany this framing device in English. "Reads," then, is ergative, while "says is a straightforward accusative verb (one that takes the accusative (which isn't marked in English - except, perhaps, for pronouns, where it's indistinguishable - morphologically - from the dative; the conventional term would be "direct object").

MrPedantic
Also, although the same few verbs tend to recur as examples in these discussions, actual usage is more imaginative.

That's what makes language so fascinating, isn't it? Nice example, there, too.

Verbs

ganesh77 — Sun, 16 Mar 2008 09:38:41 GMT

The list isn't meant to be exhaustive or carefully arranged. Any additions, corrections or further examples would be welcomed.

1 main verbs; lexical verbs (all verbs which are not auxiliaries or modals)

2 action verbs; event verbs; dynamic verbs (a verb which can be used in continuous tenses) i.e. eat, run, talk

3 state of being verbs; existence verbs; state verbs; stative verbs; static verbs (a verb which describes a state and is not usually used in a continuous tense) i.e. be, own, know

4 regular verbs (a verb that has four forms and follows the normal rules)

5 irregular verbs; strong verbs (a verb not following the normal rules for inflection)

6 auxiliary and modal verbs (which make up verbal phrases) â 23 in total

7 linking verbs; copulative verbs; copulas (a verb which links the subject and complement of a clause) i.e. It is warm today.

8 transitive verbs (a verb used to talk about an action or event that involves more than one person or thing, and so is followed by an object) i.e. Sheâs wasting her money.

9 intransitive verbs (a verb used to talk about an action or event that only involved the subject and so has no object) i.e. She arrived.

10 multiword verbs

a type 1 â intransitive [phrasal verbs; adverb particle

b type 2 â transitive (inseparable) [prepositional verbs; preposition particles]

c type 3 â transitive (separable) [phrasal verbs; adverb particle]

d type 4 â transitive (with two inseparable particles) [phrasal-prepositional verbs; first particle is an adverb, second particle is a preposition]

11 compound verbs

12 delexical verbs (a verb which has very little meaning in itself but is used with an object to describe an action) i.e. She gave a small cry.

13 ditransitive verbs (a verb which can have both a direct and indirect object) i.e. She gave me a kiss.

14 ergative verbs (a verb which can be used transitively to focus on the performer of the action, or intransitively to focus on the thing affected by the action) i.e. He boiled the water. The water boiled.

15 reporting verbs; performance verbs; performative verbs (a verb used with a quote or a reported clause to describe what people say or think) i.e. suggest, say, wonder

16 reciprocal verbs (a verb which describes an action involving two people doing the same thing to each other) i.e. They met in the street.

17 reflexive verbs (a verb which is typically used with a reflexive pronoun) i.e. Donât cut yourself with that knife.

18 defective verbs (a verb without all the inflected forms of a regular verb) i.e. modals

19 finite and non-finite

a infinitives

b gerunds; verbal nouns

c participles

20 catenative verbs (a verb that takes other verb forms as objects; found at the head of a series of linked constructions) i.e. We agreed to try to decide to stop eating snacks.

21 causative verbs (a verb that designates the action necessary to cause another action to happen) i.e. The devil made me do it.

Re: The infinitive "to be"

CalifJim — Thu, 27 Sep 2007 02:34:32 GMT

Your questions reveal the limitations of the traditional technical vocabulary for discussing grammatical structures!

You can think of infinitives as a direct objects of the verb want.
On the other hand, want takes a clause as its complement.

I want (He helps us).

But the complement clause is expressed with an infinitive. He helps us >> him to help us.
The final, correct form of I want (He helps us) is I want him to help us.

When the subject of want is the same as the subject of the complement clause, the subject in the complement clause is deleted:

I want (I am a doctor) >> I want me to be a doctor >> I want me to be a doctor >> I want to be a doctor.

In the same way:

She wants (She is happy) >> She wants her to be happy >> She wants ~~her~~ to be happy. >> She wants to be happy.

In the first of these a doctor is a predicate noun/nominative, as you say. And in the second, happy is a predicate adjective, as you say.
___________

The other pattern is quite different. is/are/was/were to be is a semi-modal construction with an idiomatic meaning. The whole pattern (in brackets below) can be analyzed as a verb phrase.

She [is to be] a doctor.

CJ

Modal Substitutes

Anonymous — Wed, 13 Dec 2006 20:31:47 GMT

I have a sentence that I am trying to label parts of speech, but having some difficulty.The sentence is:

I am allowed to ride the roller coaster

I know that 'am allowed to' is a substitute for the modal verb 'may' as in:

I may ride the roller coaster

In the second example, I have 'I' as the subject, 'may' as a modal connected to the verb 'ride', and 'the roller coaster' as a noun phrase serving as a direct object of the verb.

My question is this: How do I label the parts of the substitute 'am allowed to' to make up a modal.

I have look through phrase structure rules and cannot find a rule that says modals may be phrases made up of other parts of speech.

Any Ideas?

Calcio

Re: parsing

Englishuser — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 19:43:04 GMT

Hi Inchoateknowledge,

A finite clause is a clause that has either present/past tense or a modal verb. What he did has a past tense which means it is a finite clause.

An object complement, or object predicative, is a clause element that occurs after the direct object and characterises the object. Unforgettable in your sentence meets this criterion.

Source: Longman Student Grammar of Spoken and Written English, D. Biber, S. Conrad, G. Leech, Pearson Education Ltd., 2002

Modal "would"

Buzel — Sun, 20 Aug 2006 19:09:35 GMT

Suppose we have the following sentence

"I think that a direct object would be the best choise in this case".

Can i transfer it into the past with "would" remaining its modal meaning, not the past of "will".

I mean, if i write " I thought that direct object would be the best choise in this case", could "would" be taken as both an auxiliary and a modal verb?

Re: to be parsed

MrPedantic — Sat, 03 Sep 2005 10:27:54 GMT

Hello K.O.

That looks good - here's a little more detail:

Clause 1

We - subject

were spared - passive voice, past tense

the storm's fury - noun phrase, object (the storm's - possessive; fury - direct object)

Clause 2

but - coordinating conjunction

now - adverb

are having - modal verb, present continuous

to deal with - phrasal verb (prepositional), to-infinitive

the refugees and the misery - two objects coordinated by 'and'

(I expect there are other ways of parsing it.)

The present continuous emphasises the fact that the action is taking place as the speaker utters the sentence.

MrP

Re: be bothered

MrPedantic — Thu, 01 Sep 2005 22:38:59 GMT

Just to supplement Anon's comment:

Yes, 'be' is the bare infinitive of 'be'. 'Bothered' is the past participle of 'bother'. As Anon says, this is a passive form of the verb, with the modal verb 'can'; so there's no need to think of it as direct object + object complement.

MrP

Re: Sentence analysis

hela — Sun, 16 Jan 2005 13:19:46 GMT

Hello,

Nobody replied to my previous post, but I hope someone will for this one

1) The representative told the press a lie out of fear of retribution.

Parts of speech:

The = definite article
Representative = noun
Told = ditransitive verb
Press = noun
A = indefinite article
Lie = noun
Out of = complex preposition
Fear = noun
Of = preposition
Retribution = noun

Sentence elements:

The representative = subject
Told = verb
The press = indirect object
A lie = direct object
Out of fear of retribution = adverbial of reason

2) Children should watch less television.

Parts of speech:

Children = noun
Should = modal auxiliary
Watch = transitive verb
Less = comparative adjective (?)
Television = noun

Sentence elements:

Children = subject (noun phrase)
Should watch = verb (verb phrase)
Less television = direct object (?) (noun phrase)

3) We walked five miles to a garage.

Parts of speech:

We = subjective personal pronoun
Walked = intransitive verb (?)
Five = determinative adjective / cardinal numeral (?)
Miles = nouns
To = preposition
A = definite pronoun
Garage = noun

Sentence elements:

We = subject
Walked = verb
Five miles = adverbial (?)
To a garage = adverbial of place

See you for another post,
Hela