zompist wrote:You've forcefully rebutted something I didn't say, while completely failing to grasp what I did say. With added sarcasm to show how clever you are!
I already said this, but... if I say I think sentence X is anomalous, that does not mean that sentence-X-plus-any-crap-you-can-add-onto-it is also anomalous. Language is funny that way. .
If you don't know what Gricean means, go look it up rather than pretending I wrote something I didn't.
Firstly, I know what it means. Fuck you.
Secondly, tell me, is the sentence "He put it on the table" anomalous, or is it contextually felicitous? It violates the maxim of quantity, because we don't know who "he" is or what "it" is. How can a person ever say such a thing? Since we are so hell-bent on ignoring any possible context wherein a sentence might possibly make sense, then how can you defend "he put it on the table" by invoking gricean maxims?
"It will not come by waiting for it. It will not be said, 'Here it is,' or 'There it is.' Rather, the Kingdom of the Father is spread out upon the earth, and men do not see it."
– The Gospel of Thomas
If you just didn't understand, I'd be willing to try to explain. But when it's combined with the fuck-you attitude, then the only response you deserve is a fuck you back.
The basic objection he raises seems valid enough to me. Assuming still that both are given in isolation, how exactly is "this book was written" any more anomalous than "he put it on the table"?
zompist wrote:If you just didn't understand, I'd be willing to try to explain. But when it's combined with the fuck-you attitude, then the only response you deserve is a fuck you back.
Maybe instead of responding to you earlier with an actual answer, I should've made a similarly indignant post about your condescending here-lemme-Google-that-for-you attitude as an excuse to avoid addressing any of your actual points. That way everybody would know how intellectually superior I am.
"It will not come by waiting for it. It will not be said, 'Here it is,' or 'There it is.' Rather, the Kingdom of the Father is spread out upon the earth, and men do not see it."
– The Gospel of Thomas
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.
Why do people hate abandoning bad models? If a model proposes something but physical evidence proves it wrong it's the model that's broken, not the evidence. Same with Chomsky and Piraha. It would disapprove some of his "linguistic universals"? Then it's got to go, no way our theory can be wrong eh boys?
Back on topic look at this sentence: John's brother's cat's bed
Three objects are possessed, three are possessors, two are both! can we say that this phrase would throw away the concept of possession? Of course not! We just accept that possession can be concatentive, and I think OP's proved full well valency can be too.
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.
Why do people hate abandoning bad models? If a model proposes something but physical evidence proves it wrong it's the model that's broken, not the evidence. Same with Chomsky and Piraha. It would disapprove some of his "linguistic universals"? Then it's got to go, no way our theory can be wrong eh boys?
In the case of Pirahã, it is a possibility that Daniel Everett is full of shit and there has been stuff written criticizing his method.
Back on topic look at this sentence: John's brother's cat's bed
Three objects are possessed, three are possessors, two are both! can we say that this phrase would throw away the concept of possession? Of course not! We just accept that possession can be concatentive,
Our structure doesn't require us to accept a new thing as it easily explains that structure and that isn't concatenation.
and I think OP's proved full well valency can be too.
except they haven't. All they did was show that certain prepositional phrases are semantically similar to arguments. They did nothing to show how it is syntactically an argument, which is the issue here.
Also please don't revive shit dead threads anymore.
