Ergative, accusative and Austronesian do not exist?

[Miekko]

tehranhamburger,
do you agree that coordination gaps are a meaningful test for subjecthood?

[TehranHamburger]

tehranhamburger,
do you agree that coordination gaps are a meaningful test for subjecthood?

Depends in what way you're actually using them, but in general yes, they can be used to demonstrate alignment, how so?

[Miekko]

tehranhamburger,
do you agree that coordination gaps are a meaningful test for subjecthood?

Depends in what way you're actually using them, but in general yes, they can be used to demonstrate alignment, how so?

So, it should be possible to coordinate any two predicates with the same subject and omit it before the second predicate, leaving a gap in one of them, along these lines:

I like chess but ___ suck at playing it.

[KathTheDragon]

In one of Zompist's books, he describes a quick rule of thumb for identifying verbal arguments:if it can be omitted, it's not an argument. Thus, in the sentence 'I saw him' the word him cannot be omitted, so it is an argument. In the sentence 'He was seen by me' the words by me certainly can be omitted, so they do not constitute an argument at all. Hope that helps, and I'll try and find a book and page reference.

[TehranHamburger]

tehranhamburger,
do you agree that coordination gaps are a meaningful test for subjecthood?

Depends in what way you're actually using them, but in general yes, they can be used to demonstrate alignment, how so?

So, it should be possible to coordinate any two predicates with the same subject and omit it before the second predicate, leaving a gap in one of them, along these lines:

I like chess but ___ suck at playing it.

Yeah? Just like you can say 'I am greeted by my dog but not by my cat'.

Note that 'by ...' does not constitute subject in English and I never claimed it did, it constitutes an agent. That said, you can still say 'I am greeted by my dog, but not loved.'

In one of Zompist's books, he describes a quick rule of thumb for identifying verbal arguments:if it can be omitted, it's not an argument. Thus, in the sentence 'I saw him' the word him cannot be omitted, so it is an argument. In the sentence 'He was seen by me' the words by me certainly can be omitted, so they do not constitute an argument at all. Hope that helps, and I'll try and find a book and page reference.

That makes no sense 'I saw' is perfectly grammatical. You can very often omit the accusative verbal argument in English as the 'ergative' of the passive voice.

The one argument you can make however is that what defines a verbal argument is that there exists at least one verb which absolutely requires it. While many English verbs are intransitive or ambitranstive, there are some truly transitive verbs which require both an accusative and nominative argument. But note that this definition screws a lot of other languages over which are pro drop and can drop pretty much every part of the sentence to leave it either unspecified or implied by context.

[Jipí]

Suggested reading: Van Valin, Robert D., Jr. An Introduction to Syntax. 2001. Cambridge: CUP, 2003.

^ Book

21–80.

^ Page reference

Just saying.

[Culla]

Also: a prototypical passive sentence is not "the mouse was eaten by a cat"

It's "the mouse was eaten".

That's my point, if there was no way to introduce an agent then the passive voice in English would be intransitive and it would fit the definition of an accusative language. But there is a way to introduce an agent and this is grammatical. 'mouse was eaten by a cat' construct with 'by' is completely grammaticalized at this point. It's no longer semantic, it can't be replaced with a word with a similar meaning like 'the mouse was eaten through a cat' or 'with a cat' which are also used to mark instruments alongside 'by'.

There is no possible argument to be made for the passive voice in English to be intransitive and therefore it's not a true passive voice by the letter of the definition. Just because the patientive argument is marked by word order and the agentive by an adpositional changes nothing, the very same thing happens in Aryan languages and they call that an ergative as well

The issue here is that I don't thing you understand the concept of what a passive is or what an argument is. As said in this thread, passives and anti-passives are valence decreasing operations, meaning that it reduces the numbers of arguments of the verb. The demoted agent is no longer an argument of the verb and in english, at least, requires a preposition phrase to be reintroduced. I don't know what you mean by "by" being grammaticalized as it isn't unheard of for prepositions to be used for specific constructions and "with" and "through" never express any amount of agency in their means so it makes no sense to argue what I bolded. Also I think you need to look up the development of ergavity in Indo-aryan languages. It might surprise you that they aren't connected to the passive at all (or least in most cases).

[TehranHamburger]

Also: a prototypical passive sentence is not "the mouse was eaten by a cat"

It's "the mouse was eaten".

That's my point, if there was no way to introduce an agent then the passive voice in English would be intransitive and it would fit the definition of an accusative language. But there is a way to introduce an agent and this is grammatical. 'mouse was eaten by a cat' construct with 'by' is completely grammaticalized at this point. It's no longer semantic, it can't be replaced with a word with a similar meaning like 'the mouse was eaten through a cat' or 'with a cat' which are also used to mark instruments alongside 'by'.

There is no possible argument to be made for the passive voice in English to be intransitive and therefore it's not a true passive voice by the letter of the definition. Just because the patientive argument is marked by word order and the agentive by an adpositional changes nothing, the very same thing happens in Aryan languages and they call that an ergative as well

The issue here is that I don't thing you understand the concept of what a passive is or what an argument is. As said in this thread, passives and anti-passives are valence decreasing operations, meaning that it reduces the numbers of arguments of the verb. The demoted agent is no longer an argument of the verb and in english, at least, requires a preposition phrase to be reintroduced. I don't know what you mean by "by" being grammaticalized as it isn't unheard of for prepositions to be used for specific constructions and "with" and "through" never express any amount of agency in their means so it makes no sense to argue what I bolded.

Yes, and I argued in my OP that because it is transitive it is not strictly a passive. You're making a circular argument in tandem with other people. Arguing that it is a true passive because it is intransitive, and you're citing the reason if transitivity by it being a passive. I'm arguing that the terminology of 'passive' at this point is strictly speaking incorrect because it exhibits ambitransitivity.

I don't really see a real grammatical argument against ambitransititivity of what is commonly called the 'passive' in English. Surely that one of the arguments is marked by an adpositional is no grammatical argument against it being an actual proper grammatical argument of the passive, many languages mark core grammatical arguments of the verb with adpositionals.

Also I think you need to look up the development of ergavity in Indo-aryan languages. It might surprise you that they aren't connected to the passive at all (or least in most cases).

As far as I am aware, there is no evidence against the idea whatsoever that the modern ergative nature of the perfective system in Khariboli and related languages derives from what was originally a passive construction with the -ne ending originally deriving from the older Aryan instrumental case. If you disagree then go ahead and point it out but I've always learnt the historical development of ergativity in Aryan languages as a re-analysation of a passive construction.

[KathTheDragon]

Edit: I did have a little response here, but seeing as other people snuck in posts while I was eating breakfast, it became irrelevant.

[zompist]

Got to go in a few minutes, so I can't write a full response.

Tehran, it's great to be question your reading material and try to make connections yourself. But it's not so great to stick to misunderstandings when they are pointed out. You come off as more ore less saying that if you ignore all morphosyntactic facts and mish-mash constructions together indiscriminately, then morphosyntactic alignments start to get confused. Yes, they get confused because you're mixing things up.

Overall, you don't seem to understand valence, so please read up on that rather than just defending yourself further. The whole point of valence operations is that they change the argument structure of verbs. When you claim that the English passive has two verbal arguments, you are completely missing that it is a valence operation-- that one of the points of using the passive is to reduce the number of arguments.

In English, prepositional phrases do not mark verbal arguments. If necessary, take that as axiomatic-- it's the only way that we can make sense of valence in English. If we did start counting prepositional phrases as arguments, we'd have to recognize sentences with valence of half a dozen, which is just not how the concept works.

A side point, but you're incorrect that any transitive sentence can be passivized in English:
It snowed a ton. -> *A ton was snowed by it.
I walked a block. -> *?A block was walked by me.
I dared to cross the Rubicon. -> *The Rubicon was dared to cross by me.

(If you object that "snow" and "walk" are not usually transitive... well, congrats, welcome to more valence operations.)

Finally, it's pretty weird to just declare that "I saw" is grammatical. Grammaticality judgments can be tricky, but even if this particular example works differently in your dialect, try to see the principle. Use other words:
He killed John --> *He killed.
He broke the window -> *He broke.
He fixed the watch -> *He fixed.
He wore his trousers -> *He wore.

Sometimes the general rule is obscured by the fact that English is pretty liberal with null-morph valence-changing derivatives. E.g., you can say
I ate the roast beef --> I ate.
I read the book. --> I read.
But this isn't because patients of intransitives can be freely omitted in English; it's because "eat" has two senses, a transitive verb with two roles and an intransitive with one.

[Salmoneus]

Er... your third example is wrong. "I dared to cross the Rubicon" > "To cross the Rubicon was dared by me". [OK, it sounds odd with the pronoun, but, eg, "To cross the Rubicon was dared by only three men in Roman history" sounds fine to me. Anyway, 'dare' is the finite verb here, not 'to cross'!]

(With the first two examples: are they really transitive sentences, or are they just intransitives with adverbs that look superficially like nouns? "A ton" in particular seems like it's not really an object - for instance, it can snow a ton, or a whole heap, or a shitload, but it can't really snow a kilogram. Distances are productive here (including for snow - it can snow four inches)... but still, do you want to call ever transtive sentence you can add 'two feet' to suddenly ditransitive? (I hit the ball... two feet. I followed the man... two feet. Etc). If you do, how do you feel about 'two times' instead? Intuitively that seems similar, and feels more like an adverb than a direct object. Even if you don't accept the two feet/two times analogy, would you consider saying that in "I ran two miles" the 'two miles' may be an indirect object rather than a direct one, given that that's the role it takes in the 'ditransitive' forms? (Yes, I know there are problems with that, but...).)

[TehranHamburger]

In English, prepositional phrases do not mark verbal arguments. If necessary, take that as axiomatic-- it's the only way that we can make sense of valence in English. If we did start counting prepositional phrases as arguments, we'd have to recognize sentences with valence of half a dozen, which is just not how the concept works.

surely you do not expect me to do this as an axiom? And what if English still had an instrumental case used for it like in Russian? Then it suddenly indeed could be a verbal argument?

Again, explain to me why an adpositional in English cannot mark a verbal argument when it does so in many languages.

A side point, but you're incorrect that any transitive sentence can be passivized in English:
It snowed a ton. -> *A ton was snowed by it.[/quote]'a ton' is an adverb, not an object. 'It helped me a ton". Apart from that, 'to show' is clearly intransitive. You can't exactly say 'It snowed him' or whatever. Using 'a lot' or 'a ton' or 'quite a huge amount' in such constructs is clearly adverbial. Also note 'I was helped a ton by John'

I walked a block. -> *?A block was walked by me.

Again 'a block' is adverbal in nature as evidenced by 'I took him a block', again, cf 'he was taken a block by me'
I dared to cross the Rubicon. -> *The Rubicon was dared to cross by me. That is because 'The rubicon was dared to cross' itself isn't the passive of that phrase. 'The rubicon was dared to cross' means 'Someone dared the rubicon to perform the action of crossing'. Catenative verb structures in general in English change semantic when they are passivied. If we say 'The rubicon was dared to be crossed' in this case it also means something slightly different. As in, not the entire catenative phrase of 'to dare to cross' is passivized as a whole, but the two elements seperately. Also, no one would claim that 'to dare to cross' is one verb which therefore has its own passive, I do not and have never claimed such a thing.

(If you object that "snow" and "walk" are not usually transitive... well, congrats, welcome to more valence operations.)

They are alsways intransitive as I outlined above 'a tone' is adverbial in nature. There is no reason to assume whatsoever it's an object in this case since 'a ton' is simply normally an adverb and 'it snowed' is intransitive. There is really no reason to assume that via some magical weird thing two exceptions arise here while it can be explained by having none.

Finally, it's pretty weird to just declare that "I saw" is grammatical. Grammaticality judgments can be tricky, but even if this particular example works differently in your dialect, try to see the principle. Use other words:
He killed John --> *He killed.
He broke the window -> *He broke.
He fixed the watch -> *He fixed.
He wore his trousers -> *He wore.

He killed is grammatical to me, the rest is not.

Sometimes the general rule is obscured by the fact that English is pretty liberal with null-morph valence-changing derivatives. E.g., you can say
I ate the roast beef --> I ate.
I read the book. --> I read.
But this isn't because patients of intransitives can be freely omitted in English; it's because "eat" has two senses, a transitive verb with two roles and an intransitive with one.

To me 'I ate' is grammatical, especially with 'I already ate', 'I read' is not 'I already read' does not make sense to me 'I already read the book here'.

However, again, explain why a prepositional phrase cannot be a core verbal argument in English. If we assume this as an axiom, yes, then I concede that if the axiom is assumed true for the sake of argument. The 'passive' voice in English is correct terminology because it is intransitive if we assume that a prepositional phrase cannot mark a core verbal argument.

However, surely you do not expect to use axiom away anything you don't like? Accepting adpositional phrases as core verbal arguments is age old practice. I again refer to how the -ne marker which marks the ergative in khariboli is a clitic postpositional demanding governing the oblique case which is commonly to have originated from an older instrumental marker. The exact same situation 'by' is in. except that it comes in front rather than after the noun phrase.

Er... your third example is wrong. "I dared to cross the Rubicon" > "To cross the Rubicon was dared by me". [OK, it sounds odd with the pronoun, but, eg, "To cross the Rubicon was dared by only three men in Roman history" sounds fine to me. Anyway, 'dare' is the finite verb here, not 'to cross'!]

(With the first two examples: are they really transitive sentences, or are they just intransitives with adverbs that look superficially like nouns? "A ton" in particular seems like it's not really an object - for instance, it can snow a ton, or a whole heap, or a shitload, but it can't really snow a kilogram. Distances are productive here (including for snow - it can snow four inches)... but still, do you want to call ever transtive sentence you can add 'two feet' to suddenly ditransitive? (I hit the ball... two feet. I followed the man... two feet. Etc). If you do, how do you feel about 'two times' instead? Intuitively that seems similar, and feels more like an adverb than a direct object. Even if you don't accept the two feet/two times analogy, would you consider saying that in "I ran two miles" the 'two miles' may be an indirect object rather than a direct one, given that that's the role it takes in the 'ditransitive' forms? (Yes, I know there are problems with that, but...).)

Whatever 'a ton' is it is not an object unless you believe English sentences can have two direct objects' 'It took me a ton', clearly 'it' is the subject 'me' is the direct object and 'a ton' is probably an adverb. Also note 'I was taken a ton by it'. It's grammatical, but 'It took me a ton' is idiomatic so 'I was taken a ton by it' doesn't quite carry the same meaning.

Edit: to sum up the core of my argument:

1: I know what a passive voice is and I know what reduced valency is, I am arguing that because the English 'passive' appears to be ambitransitive, it is not strictly appropriate to call it a passive. Obviously at earlier stages of English 'by' was a semantic marker but it's hard to deny at this point that it has become a complete grammatical verbal marker, it marks the second argument even if the word 'by' makes no semantic sense whatsoever any more.

2: I see no reason to say that a adpositional phrase cannot be a core verbal marker. I refer to Khariboli where the 'ergative' case is marked by a postposition which itself descends from an older instrumental marker and where indeed the ergative perfect-system is descended from passive construction. Apart from that many languages mark the accusative with an adposition but leave the nominative unmarked.

3: If we assume by axiom that the above is not true, and a prepositional phrase cannot be a core argument, yes, then if we axiomatically assume that then the entire discussion is resolved and the English passive voice is a true strict passive and intransitive.

4: a ton in 'it snowed a ton' is not an object, it is most likely an adverb or some other category. (its comparitive forms go weirdly). It is obviously etymologically an actual noun phrase but its use phrases which already have an object makes the analysis of it as an object dubious. It could be argued to be an object-complement but I never argued the object-complement could be passified.

[TehranHamburger]

By the way, another very strong argument why 'by' is a syntactic marker for a core verbal argument is that in an active sentence, it behaves grammatically differently. In an active voice you always use the singular without an article. Saying 'I go there by a car' sounds weird, the correct form is 'I go there by car.' But in the passive you can indeed differentiate 'I was taken by storm' or 'I was taken by a storm' means two different things altgoether, the latter being the passive form of 'A storm took me. Indeed, you can even say

'I was taken by storm by a storm'.

This unambiguously differentiates the actual verbal core argument and the instrumental.

I'm sorry, but you can come with 'all the experts claim it', all you want. 'by' has special syntactic meaning in a passive voice whether or the experts like it or not, whether you axiomatize it or not until you come with an actual argument, not axiom, why it is not. Argument to authority is a fallacy. The 'by' in the passive is grammatically distinct from the by in the active.

[KathTheDragon]

In your example 'I was taken by storm', 'by storm' is just as adverbial as 'a ton' in 'It snowed a ton'. Therefore, that argument is void. After all, try replacing 'storm' with other nouns.

[TehranHamburger]

In your example 'I was taken by storm', 'by storm' is just as adverbial as 'a ton' in 'It snowed a ton'. Therefore, that argument is void. After all, try replacing 'storm' with other nouns.

That's my argument?? I'm arguing that 'I'm taken by storm' and 'I'm taken by a storm' are morphologically distinct. The latter marks an actual verbal argument, the former is an instrumental adverbial postpositional.

[zompist]

In English, prepositional phrases do not mark verbal arguments. If necessary, take that as axiomatic-- it's the only way that we can make sense of valence in English. If we did start counting prepositional phrases as arguments, we'd have to recognize sentences with valence of half a dozen, which is just not how the concept works.

surely you do not expect me to do this as an axiom? And what if English still had an instrumental case used for it like in Russian? Then it suddenly indeed could be a verbal argument?

Again, explain to me why an adpositional in English cannot mark a verbal argument when it does so in many languages.

I already did. If you count prepositional phrases in English as arguments, you throw away the concept of valence. It leads to nonsense, so we don't do that.

But turn it around. Why do you think adpositional phrases are arguments? In the languages I know with adpositions, they serve many purposes: adverbials, adjuncts to nouns, topics, comparison classes.... Do you know a language where adpositional phrases only mark arguments? And how would you even know?

As for an instrumental case, cases are not arguments either! Are you seriously maintaining that every case is an argument to the verb? Have you looked at Quechua, Finnish, Hungarian, or even Latin?

The key question for you is "How do you idenfity the arguments for a verb in a given language?" The answer is not that if you find a feature used to mark an argument in language X, then every time that feature is used in any other language it marks an argument.

4: a ton in 'it snowed a ton' is not an object, it is most likely an adverb or some other category. (its comparitive forms go weirdly). It is obviously etymologically an actual noun phrase but its use phrases which already have an object makes the analysis of it as an object dubious. It could be argued to be an object-complement but I never argued the object-complement could be passified.

It's an applicative, which is one way languages increase valence of a verb.

[TehranHamburger]

In English, prepositional phrases do not mark verbal arguments. If necessary, take that as axiomatic-- it's the only way that we can make sense of valence in English. If we did start counting prepositional phrases as arguments, we'd have to recognize sentences with valence of half a dozen, which is just not how the concept works.

surely you do not expect me to do this as an axiom? And what if English still had an instrumental case used for it like in Russian? Then it suddenly indeed could be a verbal argument?

Again, explain to me why an adpositional in English cannot mark a verbal argument when it does so in many languages.

I already did. If you count prepositional phrases in English as arguments, you throw away the concept of valence. It leads to nonsense, so we don't do that.

You know that what you are effectively saying right now is 'English has a strict passive because we axiomize that prepositional phrases cannot be core verbal arguments, we do this because otherwise it leads to English not having a strict passive, right? Surely this is circular.

I'm only arguing that 'to', for' and 'by' as prepositional phrases can signify true core arguments by the way. Apart from that, many languages used adpositionals from some core arguments but not for others.

But turn it around. Why do you think adpositional phrases are arguments? In the languages I know with adpositions, they serve many purposes: adverbials, adjuncts to nouns, topics, comparison classes.... Do you know a language where adpositional phrases only mark arguments? And how would you even know?

I am saying that 'by' in the passive used this way is a core argument. I'm not arguing any other adpositional is. As I already said 'by' is clearly not semantic but purely grammatical, it is used in cases where the meaning of 'by' makes no sense any more and as I outlined this grammatical version of 'by' can only be used in the passive, this makes it surely a grammatical core argument?

As for an instrumental case, cases are not arguments either! Are you seriously maintaining that every case is an argument to the verb? Have you looked at Quechua, Finnish, Hungarian, or even Latin?

No, I'm arguing that the instrumental case is an argument in Russian, it is not in some languages. Like I said, it becomes a verbal argument when a regular syntactic transformation irrespective of semantics always becomes possible.

The key question for you is "How do you idenfity the arguments for a verb in a given language?" The answer is not that if you find a feature used to mark an argument in language X, then every time that feature is used in any other language it marks an argument.

A core verbal argument to me satisfies the following criteria:

- There can only exist one of it. A verb cannot have two subjects, or two objects. But a verb can carry multiple instrumentals, allatives or locatives easily.
- The use of the marking is syntactic, not semantic, the syntactic information itself is carried by the verb. For instance saying 'I am loved by my mother', 'by' here carries no semantic information whatsoever, its use is purely syntactic to identify it as the agent of 'love', the verb itself carries the semantic.

Apart from that, it can be marked in any way possible, word order, case, adpositionals, tone, verbal agreement.

These criteria make locatives, allatives etc not core verbal arguments, but nominative, accusatives, ergatives and absolutives indeed core verbal arguments. The English 'by' construct in the passive but not in the active also satisfies this.

You can for instance say:

'I move by car by storm'
'I go by foot by storm'

But you can't say:

'I am taken by a man by a bear'.

Well, you can, but in this case 'by a man by a bear' is a single phrase.

Thus far the only argument you or anyone presented why 'by x' cannot be a core argument is that it is a prepositional phrase and everyone has ignored that the ergative marker in Khariboli is also a postposition which comes at the end of an entire noun phrase and governs the oblique case.

But again, the strongest argument is that 'by a sword' does not occur in the active voice, only 'by sword'. 'I am killed by a sword' or 'I am killed by sword' mean two different things. The former is the passive of 'A sword kills me', the rather of 'x kills me by sword'

4: a ton in 'it snowed a ton' is not an object, it is most likely an adverb or some other category. (its comparitive forms go weirdly). It is obviously etymologically an actual noun phrase but its use phrases which already have an object makes the analysis of it as an object dubious. It could be argued to be an object-complement but I never argued the object-complement could be passified.

It's an applicative, which is one way languages increase valence of a verb.

Maybe, but assuming this is true. I never argued the applicative or object-complement could be passified, only the true object.

[Drydic]

Ok here's my simplest question: Why do you keep saying Khariboli when billions of people know it as Hindi-Urdu?

[clawgrip]

I do have to say that "I dared to cross the Rubicon. -> *The Rubicon was dared to cross by me." seems incorrect, because "the Rubicon" is not the object of "dare", it's the object of "cross". If I asked you to turn "The Rubicon was dared to cross by me." into an active sentence without first having shown you your original sentence, you almost certainly would end up with "I dared the Rubicon to cross."

[clawgrip]

I do have to say that "I dared to cross the Rubicon. -> *The Rubicon was dared to cross by me." seems incorrect, because "the Rubicon" is not the object of "dare", it's the object of "cross". If I asked you to turn "The Rubicon was dared to cross by me." into an active sentence without first having shown you your original sentence, you almost certainly would end up with "I dared the Rubicon to cross."

However, I do not agree with these statements:

That makes no sense 'I saw' is perfectly grammatical. You can very often omit the accusative verbal argument in English as the 'ergative' of the passive voice."

To me 'I ate' is grammatical, especially with 'I already ate', 'I read' is not 'I already read' does not make sense to me 'I already read the book here'.

Just because "I saw" / "I ate" and "I saw it" / "I ate it" are both grammatically correct does not mean they are identical in meaning. Removing the object alters them semantically: "I ate it" is a comment on what I did to some object, while "I ate" is a comment on my current physical state (i.e. not in need of food), exactly parallel to "I changed" and "I changed it."

[TehranHamburger]

Ok here's my simplest question: Why do you keep saying Khariboli when billions of people know it as Hindi-Urdu?

Slight difference in meaning. Hindu-Urdu is a subset of the much larger Khariboli dialect continuum.

My much simpler question of 'Why can't adpositional phrases supposedly not be core verbal arguments in English but they can in Hindu-Urdu?' remains unanswered though. Probably because there isn't any reason and it's specifically chosen to be able to say it is intransitive so we can keep calling it a passive so for the bazillionth time in history we can keep treating English like it's Latin while it's not.

I do have to say that "I dared to cross the Rubicon. -> *The Rubicon was dared to cross by me." seems incorrect, because "the Rubicon" is not the object of "dare", it's the object of "cross". If I asked you to turn "The Rubicon was dared to cross by me." into an active sentence without first having shown you your original sentence, you almost certainly would end up with "I dared the Rubicon to cross."

However, I do not agree with these statements:

That makes no sense 'I saw' is perfectly grammatical. You can very often omit the accusative verbal argument in English as the 'ergative' of the passive voice."

To me 'I ate' is grammatical, especially with 'I already ate', 'I read' is not 'I already read' does not make sense to me 'I already read the book here'.

Just because "I saw" / "I ate" and "I saw it" / "I ate it" are both grammatically correct does not mean they are identical in meaning. Removing the object alters them semantically: "I ate it" is a comment on what I did to some object, while "I ate" is a comment on my current physical state (i.e. not in need of food), exactly parallel to "I changed" and "I changed it."

Of course removing a part of the sentence alters the semantics. Saying 'I was eaten' also has a different semantic to 'I was taken by the king' or even 'I was taken of my feet', removing parts of sentences removes the semantic of them, that's why you can insert the part to change the semantics. The point is it's grammatical. 'to eat' can exist both transitively and intransitively, this makes it ambitransitive. 'I am eaten' and 'I am eaten by him' both work, the point of contention is that 'by me' is supposedly not a core verbal argument. But I really see no reason why 'by me' is not as much a core verbal argument in 'It was eaten by me.' as 'me' is in 'It eats me.', the only reason offered is that 'prepositional phrases cannot be core verbal arguments, but this applies only to English, it's perfectly fine for other languages.'

[Drydic]

Ok here's my simplest question: Why do you keep saying Khariboli when billions of people know it as Hindi-Urdu?

Slight difference in meaning. Hindu-Urdu is a subset of the much larger Khariboli dialect continuum.

My much simpler question of 'Why can't adpositional phrases supposedly not be core verbal arguments in English but they can in Hindu-Urdu?' remains unanswered though. Probably because there isn't any reason and it's specifically chosen to be able to say it is intransitive so we can keep calling it a passive so for the bazillionth time in history we can keep treating English like it's Latin while it's not.

We've answered your "much simpler" question - you need to learn what valency is. That is the simple answer: you do not understand what you are talking about correctly (if at all).

I do have to say that "I dared to cross the Rubicon. -> *The Rubicon was dared to cross by me." seems incorrect, because "the Rubicon" is not the object of "dare", it's the object of "cross". If I asked you to turn "The Rubicon was dared to cross by me." into an active sentence without first having shown you your original sentence, you almost certainly would end up with "I dared the Rubicon to cross."

However, I do not agree with these statements:

That makes no sense 'I saw' is perfectly grammatical. You can very often omit the accusative verbal argument in English as the 'ergative' of the passive voice."

To me 'I ate' is grammatical, especially with 'I already ate', 'I read' is not 'I already read' does not make sense to me 'I already read the book here'.

Just because "I saw" / "I ate" and "I saw it" / "I ate it" are both grammatically correct does not mean they are identical in meaning. Removing the object alters them semantically: "I ate it" is a comment on what I did to some object, while "I ate" is a comment on my current physical state (i.e. not in need of food), exactly parallel to "I changed" and "I changed it."

Of course removing a part of the sentence alters the semantics. Saying 'I was eaten' also has a different semantic to 'I was taken by the king' or even 'I was taken of my feet', removing parts of sentences removes the semantic of them, that's why you can insert the part to change the semantics. The point is it's grammatical. 'to eat' can exist both transitively and intransitively, this makes it ambitransitive. 'I am eaten' and 'I am eaten by him' both work, the point of contention is that 'by me' is supposedly not a core verbal argument. But I really see no reason why 'by me' is not as much a core verbal argument in 'It was eaten by me.' as 'me' is in 'It eats me.', the only reason offered is that 'prepositional phrases cannot be core verbal arguments, but this applies only to English, it's perfectly fine for other languages.'

Valency. Have you read about it yet? Here, let Jipí help you out:

Suggested reading: Van Valin, Robert D., Jr. An Introduction to Syntax. 2001. Cambridge: CUP, 2003.

^ Book

21–80.

^ Page reference

Just saying.

Have you read those 60 pages? No? Don't reply until you do.

[TehranHamburger]

Ok here's my simplest question: Why do you keep saying Khariboli when billions of people know it as Hindi-Urdu?

Slight difference in meaning. Hindu-Urdu is a subset of the much larger Khariboli dialect continuum.

My much simpler question of 'Why can't adpositional phrases supposedly not be core verbal arguments in English but they can in Hindu-Urdu?' remains unanswered though. Probably because there isn't any reason and it's specifically chosen to be able to say it is intransitive so we can keep calling it a passive so for the bazillionth time in history we can keep treating English like it's Latin while it's not.

We've answered your "much simpler" question - you need to learn what valency is. That is the simple answer: you do not understand what you are talking about correctly (if at all).

Yes, the ultimate circular argument again. It is not a core verbal argument because it is a passive voice, it is a passive voice because it is intransitive, it is intransitive because it only has one core verbal argument.

Are you honestly trying to convince anyone but yourself with this? You don't even know yourself what grammatical argument except assuming at as axiom can be made do you? At least zompist admits it's basically an axiom.

I know what valency is and I know that 'by ...' is not commonly considered a core verbal argument and I'm saying there is no formal grammatical argument to say that and it's basically an axiom. And you don't know why either. You keep referring to 60- pages of literature, not even the exact part because you don't even know where it is in those 60 pages because it's not there. It's an axiom. It's something that is assumed just so people can continue to say the passive voice of English is intransitive. You're being seriously intellectually dishonest at this point, I have serious doubts you can give a formal grammatical argument why it's not a core syntactic argument or even know an actual formal rigorous definition of core syntactic marker from which you can prove that it's not one.

[Drydic]

Ok here's my simplest question: Why do you keep saying Khariboli when billions of people know it as Hindi-Urdu?

Slight difference in meaning. Hindu-Urdu is a subset of the much larger Khariboli dialect continuum.

My much simpler question of 'Why can't adpositional phrases supposedly not be core verbal arguments in English but they can in Hindu-Urdu?' remains unanswered though. Probably because there isn't any reason and it's specifically chosen to be able to say it is intransitive so we can keep calling it a passive so for the bazillionth time in history we can keep treating English like it's Latin while it's not.

We've answered your "much simpler" question - you need to learn what valency is. That is the simple answer: you do not understand what you are talking about correctly (if at all).

Yes, the ultimate circular argument again. It is not a core verbal argument because it is a passive voice, it is a passive voice because it is intransitive, it is intransitive because it only has one core verbal argument.

Are you honestly trying to convince anyone but yourself with this? You don't even know yourself what grammatical argument except assuming at as axiom can be made do you? At least zompist admits it's basically an axiom.

I know what valency is and I know that 'by ...' is not commonly considered a core verbal argument and I'm saying there is no formal grammatical argument to say that and it's basically an axiom. And you don't know why either. You keep referring to 60- pages of literature, not even the exact part because you don't even know where it is in those 60 pages because it's not there. It's an axiom. It's something that is assumed just so people can continue to say the passive voice of English is intransitive. You're being seriously intellectually dishonest at this point, I have serious doubts you can give a formal grammatical argument why it's not a core syntactic argument or even know an actual formal rigorous definition of core syntactic marker from which you can prove that it's not one.

Well your argument is primarily taking umbrage and forgetting that different languages do things differently.

edit: and forgetting the best advice to any student ever "assume you're wrong unless you can point out exactly why the best argument against your hypothesis is flawed." Those best arguments are given by experts, which it's fair to say probably none of us are, but we can point you to experts. Which is what Jipí did.

[TehranHamburger]

Ok here's my simplest question: Why do you keep saying Khariboli when billions of people know it as Hindi-Urdu?

Slight difference in meaning. Hindu-Urdu is a subset of the much larger Khariboli dialect continuum.

My much simpler question of 'Why can't adpositional phrases supposedly not be core verbal arguments in English but they can in Hindu-Urdu?' remains unanswered though. Probably because there isn't any reason and it's specifically chosen to be able to say it is intransitive so we can keep calling it a passive so for the bazillionth time in history we can keep treating English like it's Latin while it's not.

We've answered your "much simpler" question - you need to learn what valency is. That is the simple answer: you do not understand what you are talking about correctly (if at all).

Yes, the ultimate circular argument again. It is not a core verbal argument because it is a passive voice, it is a passive voice because it is intransitive, it is intransitive because it only has one core verbal argument.

Are you honestly trying to convince anyone but yourself with this? You don't even know yourself what grammatical argument except assuming at as axiom can be made do you? At least zompist admits it's basically an axiom.

I know what valency is and I know that 'by ...' is not commonly considered a core verbal argument and I'm saying there is no formal grammatical argument to say that and it's basically an axiom. And you don't know why either. You keep referring to 60- pages of literature, not even the exact part because you don't even know where it is in those 60 pages because it's not there. It's an axiom. It's something that is assumed just so people can continue to say the passive voice of English is intransitive. You're being seriously intellectually dishonest at this point, I have serious doubts you can give a formal grammatical argument why it's not a core syntactic argument or even know an actual formal rigorous definition of core syntactic marker from which you can prove that it's not one.

Well your argument is primarily taking umbrage and forgetting that different languages do things differently.

Yes, I'm pointing out the bizarreness of calling a completely identical syntactic construction in one language different from another. -ne in Khariboli is exactly what by ... is in English. An historical instrumental marked re-anlysed as a grammatical particle.

Can you honestly not see that saying 'In English, adpositional markers can never serve as core grammatical markers' is completely arbitrary when no such things are applied to other languages and that the reason they did this is to be able to say the passive voice is intransitive?

Apart from that, I have given a plethora of arguments which demonstrates that 'by' in the passive construct is grammatical and not semantic. What we have here is:

- a particle that is used irrespective of semantic sense, even when its older use as instrumental makes no sense whatsoever any more
- a particle that can be used linearly to transform every active clause into a 'passive' one retaining reference to both the subject and object
- a particle that only occurs in the passive construct. the 'by' in the active behaves grammatically differently and can in fact also be used in the passive (by storm vs by a storm)
- a particle which introduces a noun phrase in a construction that can only be used once in the sentence

And you are telling me that in light of all this it is not a core grammatical argument? Who are you trying to convince here honestly? Whatever be the origins of the particle and I'm sure historically the passive voice in English was intransitive, you really cannot deny that in modern English it has evolved into an ambitransitive meaning. The particle 'by' has completely stopped being a semantic instrumental marker and is currently a chiefly grammatical marker introducing whatever referent was referred to by the accusative argument in the active. There is no ambiguity possible in phrases like 'I was chauffeured by a car.', it unequivocably means that the car itself performed the chauffeuring which makes no sense sense, it does not mean 'I was chauffeured [by some unspecified driver] using a car'. It is not a semantic instrumental marker, it is a grammatical particle which introduces whatever role the verb defines as its agent.

edit: and forgetting the best advice to any student ever "assume you're wrong unless you can point out exactly why the best argument against your hypothesis is flawed." Those best arguments are given by experts, which it's fair to say probably none of us are, but we can point you to experts. Which is what Jipí did.

Who says that experts even disagree with me? I've spoken with one Ph.D. about this and what he says is basically 'Well yeah, it's an unconventional analysis, but it's not really wrong per se.''

Like I said, the book you cite doesn't talk about this.