LINGUIST List 13.1525

Sun May 26 2002

Qs: Eng Dictionaries, Reciprocals/Subject Argument

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Scott Baxter, difference between versions of American Heritage Dictionary
Nino Amiridze, reciprocal as a subject argument

Message 1: difference between versions of American Heritage Dictionary

Date: Fri, 24 May 2002 10:19:15 -0500
From: Scott Baxter <baxters

purdue.edu>
Subject: difference between versions of American Heritage Dictionary


I am interested in knowing about the usefulness of the American
Heritage Dictionary (AHD) as an etymological tool. What is the
difference between the third and fourth edition of the AHD? What
is the difference between the college edition and the full fourth
edition? Is the CD Rom useful? The dictionary is available for
free on the Interenet; is there anything in the print version
missing on the web site? I will gladly post a summary of whatever
responses I get.

Scott

********
Scott J. Baxter
Purdue University
Department of English
1356 Heavilon Hall
West Lafayette IN 47907
http://icdweb.cc.purdue.edu/~baxters/
email: baxterspurdue.edu

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Message 2: reciprocal as a subject argument

Date: Fri, 24 May 2002 13:34:12 +0000
From: Nino Amiridze <Nino.Amiridze

let.uu.nl>
Subject: reciprocal as a subject argument


Dear colleagues,

I would really appreciate it if you could help me with data and/or
references on subject occurances of reciprocal expressions.

Some languages allow reflexives to appear as subjects. For instance,
Basque (cf. (1), Xabier Artiagoitia (p.c.)), Nepali (Bickel&Yadava
2000), Greek (Anagnostopoulou&Everaert 1999), Dargwa (Kibrik 1997),
Georgian (cf. (2))...:

(1)	neure buruak hilko nau
	my head-DET-ERG it.kills.me aux
 Lit.: Myself kills me

"Something like my personality, the things I do and worry
about... that is going to kill me"

(2)	shen-ma tav-ma gatsama shen	 
your-ERG head-ERG (s)he-tortured-you you(NOM)
Lit.: Yourself tortured you
"Something related to you made you suffer"
 (the only reading available is with non-physical torture))

Georgian also allows reciprocals as subjects (cf. (3) and also Tuite 1998):

(3)	ertmanet-i k'lavt ivane-s da meri-s
each.other-nom it.kills.them John-dat and Mary-dat
Lit.: Each other kill John and Mary
"Something related to each other makes John and Mary suffer"

It would be very helpful if anyone could point me out any other
language having reciprocals as subjects.

I will post a summary at the end.

Thank you very much.

Sincerely,

Nino Amiridze

References:

Anagnostopoulou, Elena. and Martin Everaert. 1999. Towards a More
Complete Typlogy of Anaphoric Expressions. Linguistic Inquiry
30:97-119 Bickel, B. & Y.P.Yadava. 2000. A fresh look at grammatical
relations in Indo-Aryan. Lingua 110:343-373. Kibrik A.E. 1997. Beyond
subject and object: Toward a comprehensive relational
typology. Linguistic Typology 1-3, 279-346. Tuite,
K. 1998. Kartvelian Morphosyntax: Number Agreement and Morphosyntactic
Orientation in the South Caucasian Languages. München: LINCOM
Europa.

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