From cbmvax!uunet!ucl.ac.uk!ucleaar Wed Apr 1 17:52:11 1992 Return-Path: for @bu.edu:jcb=conlang@dcs.ed.ac.uk id AA00886; Wed, 1 Apr 92 15:33:13 -0500 Message-Id: <119837.9204011655@uk.ac.bcc.ts> To: conlang@buphy.bu.edu In-Reply-To: (Your message of Tue, 24 Mar 92 14:27:06 N.) <9203241327.AA00140@lt5.ltb.bso.nl> Date: Wed, 01 Apr 92 17:55:36 +0100 From: And Rosta Status: RO Dan: > Here are extracts of a discussion between And and Don, with my comments: > >>And Rosta writes: > >I omitted to mention _whom_. In my idiolect _who_ takes the form of > >_whom_ when it is the complement of a preposition & when it follows > >the preposition. This odd fact doesn't justify introducing dative > >case into English grammar. > eg "To whom did you give the newspaper?" but "Who did you give the newspaper > to?" Yes. (Furthermore, I, like most people, piedpipe only in formal written style, so _to whom_ would be very rarely heard.) [Piedpiping = bringing the prepositional head of a _wh_ word along with the _wh_ word when it is placed at the start of the clause.] > >>Hmm. In the idiolect (?) that I learned, at home and in school, _whom_ is > >>_who_ in the direct object, as well as when it is the object of a preposition, > >>just like every "non-standard" pronoun form. This makes it > >>"prepositional-dative-accusative" in my book, just as "me," "him," "her," > >>"us" and "them." I think you'll find that the analogous forms in other > >>Germanic languages are generally shown as accusatives (e.g. "mich" in > >>German, "mig" in Danish), even when (as in Danish) no noun accusative > >>ending exists. > > It appears to me that Don is taking the traditional view and And is taking > a more modern view espoused by some present-day theoreticians, probably > supporters of GPSG. The point of this view, as I understand it, is that > "me, us, him," etc. are used in all syntactic contexts except subject and > possessor, eg. "Who's there?" "me." or "it's me". So we might say that these > forms are the default forms. But even within this view, it seems sensible > to use some word like "nominative" to describe the case of the "special" forms > "he, she, I", etc. > unless one claims that it makes no sense to say that English has a nominative > but no accusative. I agree to this extent. Personal pronouns have a morphosyntactic feature [+/-'subjective']; these pronouns are [-subjective] unless they are subjects. > >_'s_ is a determiner. It certainly isn't an affix - cf. _The king > >of England's son_. Rather, it is a clitic. It takes a common noun > >as its complement, and, exceptionally among determiners, it has a > >kind of subject: in the example, _son_ is the complement of _'s_ > >and _the (king)_ is the 'subject' of _'s_. Not all syntacticians > >will agree with me than _'s_ is a determiner - some take it to > >be a postposition - but I don't think it gets taken as an argument > >for genitive case (though one never knows with syntactic theory). > > >>I believe you'll find that a genitive case (often called "possessive" in > >>English) functions in precisely the same way, except that it doesn't > >>require a _common_ noun as a complement ("Susy's Joe, not Mary's"). > > And's basic point here is that "'s" in English is different from "s" in other > Germanic languages in an essential way: it can go with an entire phrase > rather than just the preceding word. In And's example, "the king of England's > son", "'s" does not go with England but rather with "the King of England". > I don't understand the view that "'s" is a determiner. I am one of those who > consider it to be a postposition. A singular noun given a count reading must be complement of a determiner: *Friend left. The friend left. Sophy's friend left. _'S_ patterns distributionally with determiners rather than adpositions. *Friend of Sophy left. There may well be good arguments against this that I'm ignorant of. --- And