Adjectival cases vs. adverbial cases

[hwhatting]

How would you treat imperative clausess in that "omission" framework - e.g. in "Kill Bill" Bill is automatically interpreted as direct object for which reason
1) Omission / role assignment rule for imperative clauses differs from other clauses or
2) Imperative clauses have an implied subject, so this is the same assignment rule as for clauses with two arguments?
Best regards,

Hans-Werner

[TomHChappell]

How would you treat imperative clausess in that "omission" framework - e.g. in "Kill Bill" Bill is automatically interpreted as direct object for which reason
1) Omission / role assignment rule for imperative clauses differs from other clauses or
2) Imperative clauses have an implied subject, so this is the same assignment rule as for clauses with two arguments?
Best regards,

Hans-Werner

You asked a good question there.
I don't know the answer; at least not for sure.
I'd guess that the answer is, probably, your "(2)" causes or governs your "(1)".

I am going to open a new thread inspired by the last several messages in this one; I'll call it something like "What does 'Subject-Prominent' mean?"

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Tom H.C. in MI

[hwhatting]

I had a look at that thread and decided that I'm not able to do all the reading to meaningfully participate.
Just to come back to zomp's original point, namely, that there may be a way to indicate syntactic roles by an "omission / presence" hierarchy, i.e., that in English
1. in a sentence with one argument this will always be interprted as a subject and
2. in a sentence with two arguments this will always be interpreted as subject and direct object (correct me if I got you wrong, Mark!).
Now, after thinking about this a while, I came to the conclusion that English doesn't seem to work this way:
1) Does not really work for transitive verbs if the sole argument follows the verb, i.e. when it is in the object slot:
Mary kisses. - Normal interpretation: Mary (subj.) performs the action of kissing. Works.
Kisses Mary. - Normal interpretation: (Omitted subject) kisses Mary (object).
That is, the slot position overrides the putative omission / presence hierarchy.
Even if you include clearly nominative forms, that leads just to ungrammatical sentences (I'm not a native speaker, so I may be wrong here - and things like this may, of course, be admissible in poetry, but then, what isn't?): *Kisses she.
The rule seems to work, though, for some intransitive verba dicendi and cogitandi: Says / Thinks Mary. But this is a special case, and AFAIK, these constructions require that the content of what was said or thought needs to float somewhere in the near context. For other intransitive
verbs, it doesn't seem to work: *Walks / sits / prevaricates Mary.

The same seems to be true for two arguments:
Gives Peter the book. will be interpreted as (Omitted subject) gives Peter (IO) the book (O).

So, it seems to me, in English, the slot in the word order is decisive, not any omission / presence hierarchy.
Best regards,

Hans-Werner

[TomHChappell]

[snip]
Even if you include clearly nominative forms, that leads just to ungrammatical sentences (I'm not a native speaker, so I may be wrong here - and things like this may, of course, be admissible in poetry, but then, what isn't?): *Kisses she.
[snip]
So, it seems to me, in English, the slot in the word order is decisive, not any omission / presence hierarchy.
[snip]

As near as I can tell that (including the snipped parts) is all well-thought-out, Hans-Werner.

Thanks.

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Tom H.C. in MI

[nebula wind phone]

I think my intuitions are different from those of some other folks here.

I mailed [a letter to] Bob.
*I mailed Bob [to Nebraska].
*I mailed [a letter to] the package.
I mailed the package [to Nebraska].

I showed [the evidence to] the detective.
*I showed the detective[to an audience].
*I showed [the evidence to] the film.
I showed the film [to an audience].

I don't know how you'd best account for these. Maybe this is some sort of animacy hierarchy, in which people outrank packages and policemen outrank films -- but I doubt it. I think I'm just assigning nouns to the roles that they make sense in.

[¡Papapishu!]

I think I'm just assigning nouns to the roles that they make sense in.

I think you're partly right, but it's also partly determined by the verb. Logically "gave" should act the same as "showed", yet **"I gave [a present to] Bob" is unacceptable.

And I think using verbs like "mail" and "write" with an animate object is an Americanism. It isn't acceptable IMD (but "show" with an animate object is).

(How did the topic shift to the interpretation of ditransitive verbs?)

[TomHChappell]

I think you're partly right, but it's also partly determined by the verb. Logically "gave" should act the same as "showed", yet **"I gave [a present to] Bob" is unacceptable.

I believe you are right; unless you meant something other than what I understood (in which case you still might be right.)

And I think using verbs like "mail" and "write" with an animate object is an Americanism. It isn't acceptable IMD (but "show" with an animate object is).

If you look again, you'll see "nebula" put asterisks before those constructions; this means he(?) considered them ungrammatical.
Actually, "to mail somebody" probably deserves a question-mark (meaning "might not be grammatical"), or maybe two question-marks (meaning "very questionable"), rather than an asterisk. IMD it is usually a deliberate ungrammatical usage. The point appears to be that people will know what is meant even though they recognize it as ungrammatical; and perhaps also that it is quicker to say it that way than to expend the effort to come up with a more grammatical (circum?)locution.

(How did the topic shift to the interpretation of ditransitive verbs?)

IME every discussion eventually gets around to di- or tri-transitive and/or tri- or tetra-valent clauses/verbs/whatevers.
Maybe that's just me.
Other people on ZBB seem to think that every topic eventually includes a posting on lemmings; others, a posting on avoiding Indo-European-like characteristics in the conlang; others, avoiding Tengwar-like characteristics in the constructed scripts; others, "numbers in your conlang"; etc.
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Tom H.C. in MI

[¡Papapishu!]

If you look again, you'll see "nebula" put asterisks before those constructions; this means he(?) considered them ungrammatical.

No he didn't.

I mailed [a letter to] Bob.

IMD it is usually a deliberate ungrammatical usage. The point appears to be that people will know what is meant even though they recognize it as ungrammatical; and perhaps also that it is quicker to say it that way than to expend the effort to come up with a more grammatical (circum?)locution.

If people are going around using something they "know" is ungrammatical, I am quite skeptical that it actually is ungrammatical.

[TomHChappell]

If you look again, you'll see "nebula" put asterisks before those constructions; this means he(?) considered them ungrammatical.

No he didn't.

I mailed [a letter to] Bob.

Huh! I didn't realize that was the one you were talking about. There the theme/patient/directobject of "mailed" is still inanimate -- "a letter" -- but nebula suggests it could be grammatically omitted.

What _I_ meant is;

[snip]
I mailed [a letter to] Bob.
*I mailed Bob [to Nebraska].
*I mailed [a letter to] the package.
I mailed the package [to Nebraska].

I showed [the evidence to] the detective.
*I showed the detective[to an audience].
*I showed [the evidence to] the film.
I showed the film [to an audience].
[snip]

with asterisks clearly showing up on the sentences with a human direct object and/or an inanimate indirect object. Namely, asterisks show up on the following;

[snip]
*I mailed Bob [to Nebraska].
*I mailed [a letter to] the package.
[snip]
*I showed the detective[to an audience].
*I showed [the evidence to] the film.
[snip]

IMD it is usually a deliberate ungrammatical usage. The point appears to be that people will know what is meant even though they recognize it as ungrammatical; and perhaps also that it is quicker to say it that way than to expend the effort to come up with a more grammatical (circum?)locution.

If people are going around using something they "know" is ungrammatical, I am quite skeptical that it actually is ungrammatical.

Yes, I thought of something kind of like that while writing my past post;
namely, that "this sort of thing" is the early phase of a shift to making such expressions be grammatical.

By the way, you said;

And I think using verbs like "mail" and "write" with an animate object is an Americanism. It isn't acceptable IMD (but "show" with an animate object is).

I thought you were referring to sentences with explicit direct objects as well as explicit indirect objects. Using them with human themes (that is, human patients or direct objects) was, I thought, the Americanism of which you are speaking. (I think other Anglophone nations would allow one to mail an animate non-human object, such as a dog or a cat or even a wolf.) It was such expressions that I was referring to as "deliberately ungrammatical"; such as, for example,
?I mailed Bob to Grandma.

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Tom H.C. in MI

[TomHChappell]

Every language has the same range of choices:
to the best of my memory they are the following:

* lexical suppletion (like "me" and "I")

* stem modification (like "you" and "your" and "yours")

* affixes (almost always suffixes to indicate Case; but prefixes and infixes and circumfixes and superfixes and transfixes could apply as well, especially for other categories than Case)

* agreement -- some other word is modified to indicate the case of this word (for instance in English, verbs agree only with Subjects, never with Objects)

* periphrasis -- adding a word or clitic (usually an adposition -- a preposition or a postposition or an imposition -- for Case)

* pure syntax -- mostly means "word order" -- e.g. in SVO languages the S and the O might not be differently case-marked, so that "Ess Vees Oh" means "Ess" is the Subject and "Oh" is the Object, whereas "Oh Vees Ess" means "Oh" is the Object and "Ess" is the Subject.

When someone says "These are the only options" it's a challenge to find more. I think I've got one you left out, which we might call case assignment by omission. If an argument is left out, there is probably a default rule that gives the case for the remaining argument(s). In English, if a sentence has only one NP present, it's almost always a nominative subject. If two arguments are present, they're nominative and accusative (rather than, say, nom + dat, or dat + acc).

From another thread; the following URL
http://tinyurl.com/zbbah
http://linguistics.buffalo.edu/people/f ... eNoMap.pdf
has much interesting to say on these options, as well as some other options that I hadn't thought of, (although they may (or may not) have accidentally been covered by what I actually said.)
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Tom H.C. in MI