Ergative, accusative and Austronesian do not exist?

[Drydic]

Even if that were the case (which I do not grant), you're still arguing about a hypothetical version of English which has lost its active voice. The English passive is nowhere near as common as the Hindi ergative construction.

[TehranHamburger]

Even if that were the case (which I do not grant), you're still arguing about a hypothetical version of English which has lost its active voice. The English passive is nowhere near as common as the Hindi ergative construction.

Well, I'm not, all I'm saying is that the passive in English is ambitransive because the particle 'by' introduces a core verbal argument. 'common' is not a grammatical argument. The reason why we can say the the 'active' voice is the English primary transitive voice like I said is because it exhibts true transitivity, verbs which require both a nominative and an accusative argument. In the passive every instance is ambitransitive.

You can then formalize a nom-acc language as a language whose primary voice exhibits nom-acc alignment. 'common' is not a formal category. Exhibiting true transitivity or not is. Via the same principle you can formalize Austronesian as a language which lacks a primary voice.

But let me ask you this: Do you actually know a formal reason why 'by ...' is not a core verbal argument in English or do you just assume it as axiom because it sounds intuitive? And do you know a formal argument why 'under ...' isn't a core verbal argument. Because that one actually isn't and you can formalize why.

[Hallow XIII]

Primarily your argument is a fucking waste of time anyway. MSA categories are nothing but convenient shorthands for expressing how a language realises the syntactic roles of NPs. The fact that you have discovered that these roles exist in every language doesn't change that it is demonstrable that unmarked clauses (HINT HINT) in English follow Accusative structure and that they follow Ergative structure in Dyirbal.

Also, Tehran, the point of the passive voice is not that it can only take one argument but that it promotes the object of a transitive verb to the subject. It is called intransitive because it behaves like one, not because you cannot indicate agency.

[clawgrip]

Do you actually know a formal reason why 'by ...' is not a core verbal argument in English

English forbids core arguments from being dropped.
cf.
1a. I know he was seen by several people.
1b. I know he was seen.
2a. I know several people saw him.
2b. *I know saw him.

"several people" can be dropped from 1 because the passive voice has demoted it, so it is no longer a core verbal argument. It can't be dropped in 2 because as the subject it is a core verbal argument. i.e. valency.

[TehranHamburger]

Primarily your argument is a fucking waste of time anyway. MSA categories are nothing but convenient shorthands for expressing how a language realises the syntactic roles of NPs. The fact that you have discovered that these roles exist in every language doesn't change that it is demonstrable that unmarked clauses (HINT HINT) in English follow Accusative structure and that they follow Ergative structure in Dyirbal.

There are no 'unmarked' clauses, word order is a marking like cases and adpositionals. There is nothing magical about adpositionals.

Also, Tehran, the point of the passive voice is not that it can only take one argument but that it promotes the object of a transitive verb to the subject. It is called intransitive because it behaves like one, not because you cannot indicate agency.

No, the point of the passive in the strict sense is that it reduces valency and promotes the referent of the object to that of the subject.

But what you're raising is all completely irrelevant to the issue currently discussed which is simply whether or not you can consider a prepositional phrase in English a core syntactic argument of the verb. Would you care to weigh in on this?

Edit: Note by the way that your argument is completely different from the others. You are if I understand correctly saying that there indeed is no real formal difference but it's just useful to use it like this. The others argue there indeed is a formal difference which is what I'm arguing against.

But let me ask you this: Do you actually know a formal reason why 'by ...' is not a core verbal argument in English or do you just assume it as axiom because it sounds intuitive? And do you know a formal argument why 'under ...' isn't a core verbal argument. Because that one actually isn't and you can formalize why.

English forbids core arguments from being dropped.
cf.
I know he was seen by several people.
I know he was seen.
I know several people saw him.
*I know saw him.

No, English forbids like a lot of languages for the least overt argument to be dropped. Every sentence must have a subject. You just demonstrate that you cannot drop the subject. Something no one disagrees with. But you can drop the object. 'I see him' vs 'I see'. 'I breathe air' vs 'I breathe'. or indeed 'I know him' vs 'I know'.

[clawgrip]

No, English forbids like a lot of languages for the least overt argument to be dropped. Every sentence must have a subject. You just demonstrate that you cannot drop the subject. Something no one disagrees with. But you can drop the object. 'I see him' vs 'I see'. 'I breathe air' vs 'I breathe'. or indeed 'I know him' vs 'I know'.

I guess you mean most overt argument. You say you can drop the object, yet we have sentences like *As soon as I saw him I told, and *This watermelon is so big that my daughter can't carry, that show that in some cases the object cannot be dropped.

So why can I drop "air" and "him" as in your examples, but not "him" and "it" in my examples?

If we are to accept "by" as a marker of core verbal arguments, we must also accept that:
-non-subject core arguments (objects and "by" agents) can be dropped in ambitransitive and passive verbs
-non-subject core arguments (objects) cannot be dropped in transitive verbs

This opens up a new question: Why are non-subject core arguments treated differently in these two cases?
Do you have an answer?

On the other hand, if we do not accept "by" as a marker of a core argument, we get by with just one rule:
Core arguments (subjects and objects) cannot be dropped anywhere.

This also opens up a new question: Why can objects be dropped or retained in ambitransitive verbs?
I have an answer: As I'm sure you know, ambitransitive verbs are so called because they can function both as transitive and intransitive verbs. The existence or lack of an objects indicates which type of verb it is functioning as. This is made clear by pairs of sentences like He changed the company's filing system when he was in his 30s, and He changed when he was in his 30s. Clearly "the company's filing system" cannot be understood as a dropped object in the second sentence. Therefore, the reason the object appears to have been dropped is because there isn't actually any object at all, because it's acting as an intransitive verb.

[TehranHamburger]

No, English forbids like a lot of languages for the least overt argument to be dropped. Every sentence must have a subject. You just demonstrate that you cannot drop the subject. Something no one disagrees with. But you can drop the object. 'I see him' vs 'I see'. 'I breathe air' vs 'I breathe'. or indeed 'I know him' vs 'I know'.

I guess you mean most overt argument. You say you can drop the object, yet we have sentences like *As soon as I saw him I told, and *This watermelon is so big that my daughter can't carry, that show that in some cases the object cannot be dropped.

Yap, the object cannot be dropped in some cases. That is the basis of my argument of saying that the active voice can be formalized as the default voice in English.

So why can I drop "air" and "him" as in your examples, but not "him" and "it" in my examples?

If we are to accept "by" as a marker of core verbal arguments, we must also accept that:
-non-subject core arguments (objects and "by" agents) can be dropped in ambitransitive and passive verbs
-non-subject core arguments (objects) cannot be dropped in transitive verbs

This opens up a new question: Why are non-subject core arguments treated differently in these two cases?
Do you have an answer?

Like I said before, if we assume that core syntactic arguments inbihit at least one verb from which they cannot be dropped. THat leaves a lot of languages without core syntactic arguments. As far as I know, both the subject and object can freely be dropped in Finnish, the verb even agrees with the dropped subject and conjugates in the zeroth person in Finnish.

You therefore have to rule that this this rule is 'special to English', which meh's it. You can make the axiom but saying that english has special rules rules in terms of defining morphosyntax which do not apply to other languages essentially makes any cross-language discussion completely useless. You can say that in English only core verbal arguments cannot be dropped but that's just picking your definitions so you win since you cut out the nasty parts which arise from this definition in other languages. Note that is also makes verbs itself core syntactic argument because there are English verbs which have to exist with another verb such as 'can' or 'will'.

[Hallow XIII]

Primarily your argument is a fucking waste of time anyway. MSA categories are nothing but convenient shorthands for expressing how a language realises the syntactic roles of NPs. The fact that you have discovered that these roles exist in every language doesn't change that it is demonstrable that unmarked clauses (HINT HINT) in English follow Accusative structure and that they follow Ergative structure in Dyirbal.

There are no 'unmarked' clauses, word order is a marking like cases and adpositionals. There is nothing magical about adpositionals.

Also, Tehran, the point of the passive voice is not that it can only take one argument but that it promotes the object of a transitive verb to the subject. It is called intransitive because it behaves like one, not because you cannot indicate agency.

No, the point of the passive in the strict sense is that it reduces valency and promotes the referent of the object to that of the subject.

But what you're raising is all completely irrelevant to the issue currently discussed which is simply whether or not you can consider a prepositional phrase in English a core syntactic argument of the verb. Would you care to weigh in on this?

No, you cannot consider them a core argument in English, but this is not because they are prepositional phrases. It is because they are entirely optional (sans of course verbs that force them, for which they are core arguments). There is no difference between the use of the "by"-phrase in "I was killed by John" and "I went to London by car". In both cases it is a completely optional instrumental applicative phrase. The fact that they can be used to express agency in passive sentences does not change this - consider "I killed John by bludeoning him to death" and "John was killed by being bludgeoned to death". Same story for "Jack killed Jill with a mace", "Jill was killed with a mace" and "Jill was killed by Jack with a mace". In the latter sentence, both arguments can be left out. By your logic so far ()"Instrumentals are also core arguments"), this means that the passive is not only ambitransitive but optionally n-transitive. I hope you see why this classification is utterly worthless, as it treats every constituent phrase as an argument and therefore completely ignores any distinction made in the language itself.

Another way to explain this is English evidentiality: expression of how you came by a piece of information is completely optional in English, but is absolutely mandatory in other languages. Does this make evidentials a core argument for which English just happens to be "ambitransitive"?

P.S. This explanation is nowhere near as good as I had hoped, and it misses several important points without which the argument may seem sorely lacking. Sadly I am not good at explaining things in general, nor am I yet a trained linguist. I will try and touch upon these points (concerning what a core argument actually is) at a later time, as I will need time to put things together.

Edit: Note by the way that your argument is completely different from the others. You are if I understand correctly saying that there indeed is no real formal difference but it's just useful to use it like this. The others argue there indeed is a formal difference which is what I'm arguing against.

No, you misunderstand. There is a formal difference, but it is located elsewhere from where you think it is. Again, morphosyntax is exclusively about how the underlying roles are realised, and alignment is about how the core structure of the sentence is organised. A transitive verb always has two core arguments, the agent and the patient. In English, nouns are not marked for case, but pronouns are, and they align S = A. Furthermore, the word order of English is SVO, with the ((nominative)) S=A noun always coming first in the sentence.

But let me ask you this: Do you actually know a formal reason why 'by ...' is not a core verbal argument in English or do you just assume it as axiom because it sounds intuitive? And do you know a formal argument why 'under ...' isn't a core verbal argument. Because that one actually isn't and you can formalize why.

English forbids core arguments from being dropped.
cf.
I know he was seen by several people.
I know he was seen.
I know several people saw him.
*I know saw him.

No, English forbids like a lot of languages for the least overt argument to be dropped. Every sentence must have a subject. You just demonstrate that you cannot drop the subject. Something no one disagrees with. But you can drop the object. 'I see him' vs 'I see'. 'I breathe air' vs 'I breathe'. or indeed 'I know him' vs 'I know'.

English forbids core arguments from being dropped (all languages do), not just "the least overt argument". You cannot say "Jake burnt" and mean that Jake burnt something (which you would expect if your definition were true). Ambitransitivity is a property of the verb itself that arises in languages that do not overtly mark most of their valency-changing operations. So, to touch on your argument above, the passive voice of a transitive verb is not ambitransitive. The passive voice IS unaccusative, but it is not ambitransitive. Consider an ambitransitive verb such as "break". The intransitive version is "the window broke". The transitive version is "Jake broke the window". In the transitive sense of the verb it can be passivised to promote the object: "The window was broken". This is a clear valency-changing operation because the agent, which is a core argument of an active transitive verb, is optional. Now consider the active intransitive of "break": you cannot say "the window broke *by Jake". As you see English makes a clear difference between all of these categories.

[Jipí]

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.

Did you ever pick up a textbook to read up on things? The whole fucking chapter deals with which different semantic roles there are, how they can be grouped and how different languages encode them by means of syntactic/surface case. There is not just a single line or two of text that is the key to your question. The whole chapter is relevant.

But there's no arguing with narcissists like you, so I'ma shut up and grab a bag of popcorn instead.

[TehranHamburger]

Edit: you know what, scratch all this completely complicated nonsense, do you even read:

Do you realize the difference between 'by car' and 'by a car' in a passive construction?

Do you realize the difference between I was driven by car and I was driven by a car

Do you realize that one is an adverbal non core argument instrumental marker and the other is a core argument grammatical introduction of a verbal argument?

[Hallow XIII]

Um, Tehran, you cannot argue one language with another language. The whole point of MSA is that there exists universal features that are realised differently ín different languages. You can't discuss English argument structure with Finnish examples unless your point is the above statement.

[TehranHamburger]

Um, Tehran, you cannot argue one language with another language. The whole point of MSA is that there exists universal features that are realised differently ín different languages. You can't discuss English argument structure with Finnish examples unless your point is the above statement.

No, you said it was a feature of ALL languages, I dispute that claim by citing a single language where it is not a feature.

[Hallow XIII]

What.

Tehran, what you are doing is the following: you are saying that different morphosyntactic alignments are not a real thing because everything can be expressed in every language based on underlying roles. You were saying before that English also has an ergative/patient trigger because, hey, underlyingly

S_PATIENT break / S_PATIENT break AGENT

IS JUST LIKE IN ERGATIVE LANGUAGES AND WHO GIVES A FUCK HOW IT IS CONSTRUCTED

Similarly, what you are saying to me now is based off underlying roles, and you ignore completely that they are realised exactly the same at the surface. Until you comprehend that underlying roles and surface realisation are distinct but intertwining things, there can be no reasoning with you.

[TehranHamburger]

What.

Tehran, what you are doing is the following: you are saying that different morphosyntactic alignments are not a real thing because everything can be expressed in every language based on underlying roles. You were saying before that English also has an ergative/patient trigger because, hey, underlyingly

Nope, I see no way way to claim English has tripartite alignment for instance. I'm also at this point claiming there is a formal difference between English-type nom/acc and austronesian in case you haven't noticed.

S_PATIENT break / S_PATIENT break AGENT

IS JUST LIKE IN ERGATIVE LANGUAGES AND WHO GIVES A FUCK HOW IT IS CONSTRUCTED

Similarly, what you are saying to me now is based off underlying roles, and you ignore completely that they are realised exactly the same at the surface. Until you comprehend that underlying roles and surface realisation are distinct but intertwining things, there can be no reasoning with you.

'surface realisation' isn't formal and completely vague.

But back to the argument, like I said the 'by' in the passive is different from the general instrumental by. It is both semantically and grammatically distinct. Like I said 'by car' is the instrumental marker 'by a car' the ergative. They are indeed syncretic in some cases such as with pronouns but that doesn't change that they are distinct in a great many number of cases. 'I was killed by car' never implies 'a car killed me'. but rather 'someone killed me using a car' 'I was driven by a car' never implies 'Someone drove me by car' but rather 'the car drove me'

[Hallow XIII]

'surface realisation' isn't formal and completely vague.

But back to the argument, like I said the 'by' in the passive is different from the general instrumental by. It is both semantically and grammatically distinct. Like I said 'by car' is the instrumental marker 'by a car' the ergative. They are indeed syncretic in some cases such as with pronouns but that doesn't change that they are distinct in a great many number of cases. 'I was killed by car' never implies 'a car killed me'. but rather 'someone killed me using a car' 'I was driven by a car' never implies 'Someone drove me by car' but rather 'the car drove me'

Do you, like, go to a special idiot training school or are you naturally this dense? Jesus fuck even gold could learn from you.

[TehranHamburger]

Ah yes, ignoring half I say isn't enough, reject the silence and substitute personal insults this time.

[Jipí]

You don't want to even try to comprehend the point various people here have been making about established textbook knowledge and shrug said textbook knowledge off as circular argumentation because you don't know what you're talking about and absolutely aren't willing to reconsider and correct your viewpoint, is the problem. And instead of hunting down that intro book I suggested because it contains a chapter that deals exactly with what you've been trying (and failing) to come to terms with regarding morphosyntactic alignment, you shrug that well-meant suggestion off as irrelevant because I didn't point out to exact passages on specific pages that might support your argument (it won't, anyway). Thing is, I won't do your homework for you, and neither will others here. Stop jacking off to yourself already, it's unbearable.

Oh, and a classic that is often mentioned with regards to theories about the relation between underlying and surface case is Fillmore's treaty "The Case for Case" (published in the 60s, so it's probably a bit dated by now), but I found that a little hard to read, personally.

[TehranHamburger]

You don't want to even try to comprehend the point various people here have been making about established textbook knowledge and shrug said textbook knowledge off as circular argumentation because you don't know what you're talking about and absolutely aren't willing to reconsider and correct your viewpoint, is the problem. And instead of hunting down that intro book I suggested because it contains a chapter that deals exactly with what you've been trying (and failing) to come to terms with regarding morphosyntactic alignment, you shrug that well-meant suggestion off as irrelevant because I didn't point out to exact passages on specific pages that might support your argument (it won't, anyway). Thing is, I won't do your homework for you, and neither will others here. Stop jacking off to yourself already, it's unbearable.

Dude, if you're too lazy to come with the argument yourself instead of ponting people into a super vague direction then at the very least be too lazy to type ad hominems.

You're also talking like I'm going against some kind of linguistic mainstream consensus while every linguist I've spoken to essentially says 'Well, it's not wrong per se, it depends on how you define things but it certainly isn't blatantly wrong albeit unconventional' or something like that. Every sigle one agrees that 'by' in passive constructions is not a normal prepositional phrase and is a syntactic particle though.

[Legion]

Dude, if you're too lazy to come with the argument yourself instead of ponting people into a super vague direction then at the very least be too lazy to type ad hominems.

This is better than being too lazy to read a chapter in a fucking book.

Seriously are you five? When people tell you your objections are based on ill-knowledge and point you to a book's chapter that can correct that, if you're a fucking grown-up then you go read the fucking chapter and you shut the fuck up until you did, you don't go "aaaaaw but I don't wanna" because that's the attitude of kindergartener.

You're also talking like I'm going against some kind of linguistic mainstream consensus

Yes, because you are, which is why every single person on this forum (including people who've formally studied linguitics [that would include me, I have a degree]) has told you the same thing: you are wrong and you don't know what you are talking about.

while every linguist I've spoken to essentially says 'Well, it's not wrong per se, it depends on how you define things but it certainly isn't blatantly wrong albeit unconventional' or something like that.

First this is not true, because you have spoken to linguists here, on this forum, and they all told you pretty clearly that you're talking out of your ass. And since the "but in other places they agreed with me/this here is the only place where I've been treatd this poorly" pretty much always turns up to be a lie pulled off by narcissists and affabulators of your kind, I'm pretty sure that either every other linguist you've talked to has told you that you're an idiot, or that actually you haven't even talked to a real linguist before coming to this forum.

Every sigle one agrees that 'by' in passive constructions is not a normal prepositional phrase and is a syntactic particle though.

See, this is a lie, nobody who's a linguist has told you that.


You're not going to impress us with authority arguments, because
1) we don't care
2) many of us *are* the authority when it comes to linguitics matters

You're not going to find a receptive audience for your ignorant bullshit here so either go read and learn about valency and only come back then, or go fuck yourself, because half of the important contributors of this forum have already renounced the idea of talking to you.


Any more stupid post of yours will now be answered with pictures of ducks.

[Culla]

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.

Here is another way of looking to whether or not your adpositional phrase is an argument. Is it being assigned a theta role by the verb. If it is, then it should be required in the sentence or else the sentence would be ungrammatical. As many people have pointed out, english passives do not require this. It is perfectly grammatical to saying "the mouse was eaten" with out having to saying "by the cat". "by the cat" is therefore not an argument of the verb. English passives are intransitive pure and simple.

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.[/quote]

Check this out http://ling.uni-konstanz.de/pages/home/ ... a-erg.html. It's a quick read but it addresses this issue and argues that the -ne is not from the old instrumental case and that the verb in the perfect is a reanalyzed participle form. This is more consistent with what you in Kashmiri with its argeement system as well.

[TehranHamburger]

Dude, if you're too lazy to come with the argument yourself instead of ponting people into a super vague direction then at the very least be too lazy to type ad hominems.

This is better than being too lazy to read a chapter in a fucking book.

Seriously are you five? When people tell you your objections are based on ill-knowledge and point you to a book's chapter that can correct that, if you're a fucking grown-up then you go read the fucking chapter and you shut the fuck up until you did, you don't go "aaaaaw but I don't wanna" because that's the attitude of kindergartener.

You're also talking like I'm going against some kind of linguistic mainstream consensus

Yes, because you are, which is why every single person on this forum (including people who've formally studied linguitics [that would include me, I have a degree]) has told you the same thing: you are wrong and you don't know what you are talking about.

Bullshit, every linguist I asked on IRC including people who lecture at universities say the exact same thing. 'Yes, it hinches on definition and there is nothing fundamnetally wrong with analysing it like that. EVERY one. I didn't even know those people, I just went to an IRC channel and asked 'Anyone here have a linguistics degree' and they all say the same. That there is nothing fundamentally wrong with this analysis even though it is not the most conventional one.

First this is not true, because you have spoken to linguists here, on this forum, and they all told you pretty clearly that you're talking out of your ass. And since the "but in other places they agreed with me/this here is the only place where I've been treatd this poorly" pretty much always turns up to be a lie pulled off by narcissists and affabulators of your kind, I'm pretty sure that either every other linguist you've talked to has told you that you're an idiot, or that actually you haven't even talked to a real linguist before coming to this forum.

Okay, here you have a reddit exceprpt even though I don't like giing people my accont on other pages:

http://www.reddit.com/r/linguistics/com ... am/cbg40ky

There is some truth to what you're saying, if you say it right, and keep it vague. But once you get more specific, you run into theory internality. In general I think it's widely agreed that the object of the "by" PP in the English passive has the same meaning relationship to the verb as the subject of the active, and that therefore the "by" cannot have the same exact kind of fixed meaning as prepositions like "under". But anything more than that is not so trivial to find widespread agreement on, I think.

Urgh.

Every sigle one agrees that 'by' in passive constructions is not a normal prepositional phrase and is a syntactic particle though.

See, this is a lie, nobody who's a linguist has told you that.[/quote]See the above, do you also want IRC logs? Though those can obviouly be forged

In general I think it's widely agreed that the object of the "by" PP in the English passive has the same meaning relationship to the verb as the subject of the active, and that therefore the "by" cannot have the same exact kind of fixed meaning as prepositions like "under".

Also, done down on the ad hominems and 'narcisist' remarks, or are you a degreed psychoanalyist now?

[Hallow XIII]

[TehranHamburger]

Oh by the way, I was just pointed towards this:

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1 ... x/abstract

Haven't read it, but as the abstract indicates, it claims pretty much the same thing as I did and it also explicitly asserts that 'by' in the passive cannot be generated from a prepositional phrase.

Edit: more digistible: http://parles.upf.edu/llocs/bgehrke/hom ... ves_ho.pdf

[Legion]

[TehranHamburger]

Yeah, I'd say the same thing once your final logical fallacy of argument by authority is finally overthrown. As I said, this idea that passive voices in English actually exhibit transitive qualities isn't new at all.