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From: pardoej@lonnds.ml.com (Julian Pardoe LADS LDN X1428)
Subject: Re: English verb tenses
Message-ID: <D5uDrE.A3o@tigadmin.ml.com>
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Reply-To: pardoej@lonnds.ml.com
Organization: Merrill Lynch Europe
References: <3kmuba$q36@marble.Britain.EU.net>
Date: Wed, 22 Mar 1995 12:38:01 GMT
Lines: 47

In article q36@marble.Britain.EU.net, Paul Sampson <paul.sampson@octacon.co.uk> writes:
>This is possibly flying off at a tangent (but then the original
>remark which started this thread off was too) but all this talk of
>reflexive patterns prompts me to ask 'what is the difference in
>structure between a sentence containing a noun in the ergative
>case and a corresponding sentence (i.e. effectively the same
>meaning) containing a verb in the middle voice (of which 'reflexive')
>is but one subtype'?

You'll have to give some examples of the middle voice before I can attempt to
answer that.

>I mean aren't they just two 'rival' explanations
>for the same phenomenon?

Well maybe, but the what I was trying to say is that, at least sometimes,
linguists can come up with criteria for preferring one explanation over
another.

Given
   wash-PAST mother-ERG baby-NOM
we could argue that this means
   the mother washed the baby          (a)
or
   the baby was washed by the mother   (b)

Saying "Georgian is an ergative language" (a) and saying "the verb we've been
translating as `wash' really means `is washed by'" (b) are two rival explanations.

However the principle of reflexivization gives us a criterion for judging the
two explanations.  If (a) is right we'd expect to see
   wash-PAST mother-ERG self-NOM       (a*): the mother washed herself
If (b) is right we'd expect to see
   wash-PAST self-ERG baby-NOM         (b*): the baby was washed by itself

Since we actually find (a*) we can argue that explanation (a) is right.

Of course, this doesn't settle it in any absolute sense.  Maybe the principle of
reflexivization is rubbish, maybe Gerogian is an exception, maybe... but it's
more evidence that tilts the balance and when (as is the case) the principle of
pronoun raising and all those others that Harris cited and I didn't understand
all point in the same way it starts to look unreasonable to say "explanation (b)
is just as good as explanation (a)".

-- jP --


