LINGUIST List 12.1541

Tue Jun 12 2001

Qs: "Eat" as Auxiliary, Categorial Variations

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Directory

  1. Ashild Naess, "Eat" as auxiliary
  2. Nizar Habash, Categorial Variations

Message 1: "Eat" as auxiliary

 Date: Tue, 12 Jun 2001 15:46:33 +0200
From: Ashild Naess <A.Naesslet.kun.nl>
Subject: "Eat" as auxiliary

Dear linguists,

I came across an example of Hindi-Urdu using "eat" as an auxiliary in 
certain types of experiencer constructions, namely those where the 
experiencer is attributed some degree of control or agentivity (example 
from Davison, Alice 1990, in Verma and Mohanan (eds.) "Experiencer subjects 
in South Asian languages", Stanford, CSLI):

pitaa-nee apnee beeTee-par taras khaaii
father-erg self's son-on pity eat-pf
"The father felt/showed pity for his son"

This contrasts with a construction with a dative subject and "come" as the 
auxiliary, where only the non-agentive ("felt pity") reading is possible.

Do you know of other languages where the verb "eat" may function as an 
auxiliary - in any kind of construction, not just with experiencer verbs? 
In which kinds of constructions does it occur? I would also appreciate 
references that might give me more information about this construction in 
Hindi-Urdu.

Thanks,


�shild N�ss


University of Nijmegen
Erasmusplein 1
6525 GG Nijmegen
THE NETHERLANDS

+31 24 3616028

a.naesslet.kun.nl
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Message 2: Categorial Variations

 Date: Tue, 12 Jun 2001 14:03:00 -0400 (EDT)
From: Nizar Habash <habashumiacs.umd.edu>
Subject: Categorial Variations


Greetings..

Is anyone aware of the existence of a linguistic resource for categorial
variations (or semantically related morphological derivations) that given
a word returns a bag of words of all related derivations regardless of
part of speech. For example,

hunger_n -> {hunger_n, hunger_v, hungry_adj}
happy_adj -> {happy_adj, happiness_n, happily_adv} but not unhappy...

I need such a resource for some of my current research on lexical
semantics. I already have some ideas of how to build it but want to know
if it already exists.

Thank you

Nizar Habash
PhD Student
University of Maryland
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