Search results for 'tag:Verbs tag:Accusative' matching tags 'Verbs' and 'Accusative'

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.

Re: the middle voice option

MrPedantic — Sun, 25 May 2008 22:49:37 GMT

Hello Dawnstorm,

Dawnstorm

In most of these sentences you could make a case for elided objects, that are taken care off by context (rather than considered irrelevant, as in "I am eating."):

e.g. Yes, I saw X. X = anaphoric; referring to "Did you see X!" or "Omg, X!"

"You push X and I'll lift X." : X is exophoric; determined by a present or imagined contex (e.g. they're standing in front of X).

Yes, I agree; such cases could presumably be classified as "common ambitransitives" (see ex. 4a in my earlier post); or perhaps as "ambiguous ambitransitives" (see ex. 6); thus:

1. You push (it) and I'll lift (it)

But:

2. It lifted quite easily

Dawnstorm

"What should we do when we punish X?" This one's actually more like the "considering irrelevant" I mentioned above, the assumption being that there is one set of answers for all X, so that X doesn't have to be mentioned. (Similarly, "I am eating X," the point I'm making holds for all X.) Note that the listener might enquire, here, "punish who?" or "eat what?"

"Please give X generously.": Here, X usually means "money", but context probably takes care of this (it might mean used clothes, household appliances etc. for flood victims). Here X is not so much irrelevant as implied.

Again, agreed. Presumably therefore "common ambitransitives".

Dawnstorm

I've heard that cognitive linguists often work with an implied object for many "intranstives". So: "I am reading" and "I am eating" always have a hint of "I am reading X" and "I am eating X", which is not expressed. A lot of this has to do with "theta roles"; what parts the verb's arguments are playing.

I am eating (X): Subject = agent

I am dying: Subject = experiencer

***

Yes, agreed. "Eat" is presumably unergative (ex. 4); "die", unaccusative (ex. 2).

I also agree with your inverted commas ("intransitives"), for verbs such as "eat" and "read". In non-metaphorical usage, the objects of "eat" tend to belong to a particular class ("food"), and are therefore to some extent always cognate with "eat"; whereas the objects of e.g. "hit" are not.

Thus "He eats well" does not need a context, for us to understand what the implied object is; but "He hits well" does.

Dawnstorm

Notice, for example, the semantic equivalence, but syntactic difference between:

- The sign reads, "Beware of the dog!"

- The sign says, "Beware of the dog!"

I agree that there's a syntactic difference: the first can't be presented as indirect speech, for example. "Reads" has almost a copulative sense here.

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.

Dawnstorm

This is the gordian knot that tangles up syntax, semantics and pragmatics. There are a lot of problems:
- The mirror is breaking.
I am dying.

vs.

- Don't break the mirror!
- Don't kill me.

See the problem? It's not only a syntactic but also a lexical problem. Break (intr.):Die (intr.) = Break (tr.):Kill (tr.). Does it make sense to claim that "break" is ergative/unaccusative (I'm still confused by the difference) and "die" isn't, because "die" selects a different lexical item for the transitive?

No, it doesn't make sense; and precisely because of that distinction, I would call "break" here ergative (ex. 5) , and "die" unaccusative (ex. 2).

Dawnstorm

But, again, syntax is not the same as semantics. Take this construction, for example:

"He died a cruel death."

While this assigns subject and object along the formal transitive model, semantically the "agent/patient" distinction breaks down; or rather, the fact that dying is not an action that affects death posits a problem to the "agent/patient" distinction within "voice".

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".)

Dawnstorm

I'm not surprised people run from "ergativity"/"accusativity"; it's a tangle. I don't think that conventional morphological/syntactic analysis can solve the tangle adequately. It's a gordian knot, and all the syntanctician has is Alexander's sword. I'd look for solution in cognitive linguistics, construction grammar, frame semantics etc. These approaches could then help patch holes in syntax.

The terminology is not happy, admittedly; "middle voice" and "ergative" belong to other linguistic contexts, as has been mentioned; but I think it can be disentangled.

It may be the case that "ergative" usage was once much more common in English. Before the rise of the passive present progressive, for instance, an active present progressive often expressed the same meaning. Thus:

3. The house is building (pre-19th century) =
4. The house is being built

Also, although the same few verbs tend to recur as examples in these discussions, actual usage is more imaginative. For instance, last week I heard a sports commentator say:

5. The pitch doesn't look very pretty; but as long as it plays well, that's all that matters.

Best wishes,

MrP

Re: the middle voice option

Dawnstorm — Wed, 21 May 2008 18:05:09 GMT

MrPedantic
1. Yes, I saw.
2. You push and I'll lift.
3. What should we do when we punish?
4. Please give generously.

The problem I see here is a muddle of syntax, pragmatics and semantics.

In most of these sentences you could make a case for elided objects, that are taken care off by context (rather than considered irrelevant, as in "I am eating."):

e.g. Yes, I saw X. X = anaphoric; referring to "Did you see X!" or "Omg, X!"

"You push X and I'll lift X." : X is exophoric; determined by a present or imagined contex (e.g. they're standing in front of X).

"What should we do when we punish X?" This one's actually more like the "considering irrelevant" I mentioned above, the assumption being that there is one set of answers for all X, so that X doesn't have to be mentioned. (Similarly, "I am eating X," the point I'm making holds for all X.) Note that the listener might enquire, here, "punish who?" or "eat what?"

"Please give X generously.": Here, X usually means "money", but context probably takes care of this (it might mean used clothes, household appliances etc. for flood victims). Here X is not so much irrelevant as implied.

I've heard that cognitive linguists often work with an implied object for many "intranstives". So: "I am reading" and "I am eating" always have a hint of "I am reading X" and "I am eating X", which is not expressed. A lot of this has to do with "theta roles"; what parts the verb's arguments are playing.

I am eating (X): Subject = agent

I am dying: Subject = experiencer

***

I read the sign: Subject = agent; Object = patient.

The sign is read: Subject = patient;

The sign reads, "Beware of the Dog!": Subject = ? It's not, strictly speaking, a patient, as the sign isn't affected by the mental act of reading. (This is different from "The food cooks on the oven," as the food undergoes a physical change - so that the "food" can be said to be an experiencer.) Actually, what we have here is an "attribute" of the book.

Notice, for example, the semantic equivalence, but syntactic difference between:

- The sign reads, "Beware of the dog!"

- The sign says, "Beware of the dog!"

This is the gordian knot that tangles up syntax, semantics and pragmatics. There are a lot of problems:

- The mirror is breaking.

- I am dying.

vs.

- Don't break the mirror!

- Don't kill me.

See the problem? It's not only a syntactic but also a lexical problem. Break (intr.):Die (intr.) = Break (tr.):Kill (tr.). Does it make sense to claim that "break" is ergative/unaccusative (I'm still confused by the difference) and "die" isn't, because "die" selects a different lexical item for the transitive? Or should we, perhaps, split the lexical item "break" in two?

Personally, I find comparing "break" (intr.) with "break" (tr.) but not "die" (intr.) with "kill" (tr.) to be imprecise.

But, again, syntax is not the same as semantics. Take this construction, for example:

"He died a cruel death."

While this assigns subject and object along the formal transitive model, semantically the "agent/patient" distinction breaks down; or rather, the fact that dying is not an action that affects death posits a problem to the "agent/patient" distinction within "voice".

I'm not surprised people run from "ergativity"/"accusativity"; it's a tangle. I don't think that conventional morphological/syntactic analysis can solve the tangle adequately. It's a gordian knot, and all the syntanctician has is Alexander's sword. I'd look for solution in cognitive linguistics, construction grammar, frame semantics etc. These approaches could then help patch holes in syntax.

Re: the middle voice option

MrPedantic — Sat, 10 May 2008 11:40:38 GMT

I agree that the various terms are difficult to disentangle. I see the relevant taxonomy as something like this:

[S = subject, O = object, T = transitive, IN = intransitive.]

A. Not Ambitransitive

Type (i): used only intransitively

(a) past participle = adj:

1a. The plate fell (unaccusative)
1b. The fallen plate
1c. *The plate was fallen
1d. *He falls the plate

(b) past participle not = adj:

2a. The man died (unaccusative)
2b. *The died man
2c. *The man was died
2d. *He dies the man

Type (ii): transitive use sounds odd or humorous

3a. The colleague resigned (unergative)
3b. ?The resigned colleague
3c. ?The colleague was resigned
3d. ?He resigns the colleague

B. Ambitransitive (may be used in T and IN)

Type (i): Common ambitransitives (S in IN is agent and remains so in T)

4a. I understood (unergative)
4b. I understood your presentation
4c. Your presentation was understood
4d. *Your presentation understood
4e. ?The understood presentation

Type (ii): Alternating ambitransitives (S in the T is agent; in the IN, O becomes S-patient)

5a. He broke the plate
5b. The plate broke (anticausative, ergative, unaccusative)
5c. The plate was broken
5d. The broken plate
5e. The plate broke easily (anticausative, ergative, unaccusative)

Type (iii): Ambiguous ambitransitives ("common", but may become "alternating" with adverb)

6a. I read till midnight
6b. I read your book
6c. The book was read
6d. *The book read
6e. ?The read book
6f. The book read well ( = alternating, like 5e)

Type (iv): Pseudo-alternating ambitransitives (S in the T is agent; in the IN, O seems to become S-agent)

7a. He moved the plate
7b. ?The moved plate
7c. The plate was moved
7d. The plate moved (pseudo-ergative)

_____________________________

"Middle voice" would seem to be used for ambitransitive types (ii) and (iv), and for the alternating usages of (iii).

As for "ergative", etc., I wonder whether it would help to talk about "ergative, etc. structures", rather than "ergative, etc. verbs".

MrP

Re: the middle voice option

CalifJim — Thu, 08 May 2008 02:30:35 GMT

Maybe I'll see the usefulness of terms like ergative, unergative, accusative, and unaccusative verbs, and middle voice once I understand them. I've grown frustrated at disentangling them all in the past, and that has not encouraged me to try again! I've even noted apparent contradictions in the definitions of these terms. It seems to depend on which author you read and what year the work was published.

Probably because of my own failures to understand them, I don't see anything about these fine distinctions that would help learners of English. If I'm not mistaken these distinctions are of recent invention, and it seems to me that for centuries people have learned English without them, so I remain unconvinced of their usefulness -- for now.

Re: Anton's 7-letter word

Ant_222 — Thu, 01 May 2008 21:21:20 GMT

GG: Â«You mean a human is the object of the verb, rigth?Â»

Yeah, I am confused. A human to my word is the same as water to the verb "drink". In other words, it is usually in the accusative case.

Â«Is the agent a force of nature? Naturally occurring? Or brought about due to human interference in some way?Â»

No, no and (almost) no. Under certain circumstances one may provoke this to happen with them, but generally, this is not needed.

Â«Does it relate to a business setting? A family setting?Â»

Surely it's nothing about business, but it may happen in a family setting. A majority of obervations of my verb "in action" do occur in this setting.

Re: About the meaning of "where"

Velimir — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 08:56:07 GMT

Hello again,

Unfortunately,I've put one part in my previous post wrongly.Sorry for that.It would be correct to use the preposition "toward" in the following part:

"But,if the verb indicates motion,or in plain english,if you are :going toward, flying toward, traveling toward.."

What I've stated after that would be true now,i.e the following noun will be in the dative case.But,if the stress is on the final destination of flying,traveling,going..then the following noun will be in the accusative case,necessarily preceded with the preposition "to".(the preposition "to" perfectly match serbian "za",as attendant to the verbs of motion).
Although the case of a noun is influenced by the verb,modifying adjective(and its case),number(and its case)and gender of that noun,the case of the noun is most heavily influenced by the preceding preposition,if it is present.If the noun is not preceded with a preposition then other factors will determine the case of the noun.The importance of the preposition is apparent in the following example:

I arrived in London. - the noun "London" is in the accusative case

I arrived from London. - the noun "London" is in the genitive case

I suppose that it would require serious contemplation to explain all aspects of the "case" in any language,and additional comparison with english would make it really painful.

Best regards

Re: About the meaning of "where"

Velimir — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 22:11:58 GMT

I'll try to give some information on this as a non-professional.This is how it looks like in the serbian language,and I suppose,it is very similar in all other slavic languages and also the latin language.

For indicating a location the locative case of a noun is used.If the english language had similar declension of nouns then the nouns following the prepositions "in" and "at" would be in the locative case.The presence of the preceding preposition is obligatory when the noun is in the locative case.

But,if the verb indicates motion,or in plain english,if you are :
going to, flying to, traveling to..

like in the question given in the opening post,then the noun will be in the dative case.This case you can connect with the nouns following the preposition "to" although the preposition is not necessarily present.The word "dative" derives from latin "dare" which means "to give" and the usage is most obvious on the example of that verb:

I gave my girlfriend a flower.

If you translated this in serbian,"girlfriend" would be in the dative case.Indirect object is in the dative case.The direct object ("a flower") is in the accusative case.

"Cases play a major part in determining a noun's syntactic role in the sentence, so word order is not as important in Latin as it is in other languages, such as English. Because of noun cases, words can often be moved around in a sentence without significantly altering its meaning, though the emphasis will have altered" (from a Wikipedia article on the latin language)
Btw,changing nouns,adjectives,pronouns and numbers to different cases is pretty tough area of the language with more cases,and is often lifelong mistery for many natives,and I know that well.Luckily,english is not a case-sensitive language.

Best regards

Re: About the meaning of "where"

Anonymous — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 20:18:18 GMT

Oh, thanks a lot!

khoff
By the way, I'm not sure that "accusative case" describes what you're asking -- but I don't know what I would call it.

You are right. That's I just forgot that using of accusative case is different in different languages. InÂ slavic languages and Esperanto location (Ð³Ð´Ðµ = where) is a nominative case, destination (ÐºÑÐ´Ð°=whither) is an accusative case. Maybe it is so in some other european languages, I don't know exactly.

khoff
As for "where do you fly," context would usually make the meaning clear. And it seems to mean that when indicating destination, we would usually use "flying." Here are some examples:

In addition I would like to know, is every verb of movement concerned with tense this way?

Re: I/me

Tanit — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 18:41:46 GMT

Amy,

I hope I can take advantage of this post to ask you to go into more detail.

Long ago, I was told in this forum that sentences like "You're taller than me" & "You're taller than I" (omitting "am") shouldn't be used.
Shame on me ... I use the first one a lot when speaking (because of my mother tongue, I guess) and started to use the second one when I was in the UK, because of a teacher who used it quite often (now I don't use it any more -- if I happen to do that, I tend to pause and add the verb! ).

The poster pointed out that these structures can be ambiguous and gave me an example similar to:

I love her more than you.

If "her" = Mary and "you" = Ann, this sentence can mean either (1) I love Mary more than Ann does or (2) I love Mary more than (I love) Ann (I guess it usually means no. 2).

Since you wrote that "You're taller than I," although stiff, is grammatically correct, I'd like to ask you whether there are any constraints on this structure.
I mean, can we use it only when the verb is intransitive? or does the problem of ambiguity lie only in the pronoun ("you" is both nominative and accusative, while there is not a similar problem with I/me, he/him etc.)

Many thanks!

Search results for 'tag:Verbs tag:Accusative' matching tags 'Verbs' and 'Accusative'

Re: the middle voice option

Re: the middle voice option

Re: the middle voice option

Re: the middle voice option

Re: the middle voice option

Re: Anton's 7-letter word

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