Message-Id: <v02130501ae8cc18fc570@[128.120.185.208]>
Date: Thu, 17 Oct 1996 23:11:34 -0700
To: linconf@tamvm1.tamu.edu
From: pmfarrell@ucdavis.edu (Patrick Farrell)
Subject: Comments to Broadwell from Farrell
Broadwell argues that "switch-reference ... is based upon the
configurational properties of the sentence in which it appears; it is best
explained through appeal to notions like A'-status and command rather than
notions like argument or agency."
The argument goes as follows. In "possessor raising" constructions, the
possessor can determine switch reference marking. Since the raised
possessor is not an "argument" of the main clause, a condition on possessor
raising cannot be stated in terms of semantic notions like "agent" or
"argument". A configurational account in terms of
A' binding and so forth is therefore called for.
I would like to comment on what I see as two weaknesses in the overall
argumentation. First, it depends on the claim that the "raised possessor"
is not an arugment of the main verb. Is this not an assertion or
assumption, rather than something that has been established? The implicit
reasoning seems to be that (6) and (7) are semantically equivalent, having
the meaning of the English gloss presumably, and therefore the "raised
possessor" in (7) is not an "argument" of the verb. There have been
analyses of this kind of phenomenon according to which such sentences are
not exact paraphrases AND the so-called raised possessor IS an argument of
the verb.
Second, the conclusion that a configurational account in terms of A'
binding and so forth is needed doesn't follow from the putative result that
notions like "agent" or "argument" are not viable bases for formulating a
condition on switch-reference marking. It seems clear that the Choctaw
condition could be stated in terms of some notion of "subject". Indeed the
case for stating the condition in terms of grammatical relations, based on
various further considerations, has been made (see Davies 1984, 1986,
Farrell, Marlett and Perlmutter 1991). I don't see how "geometric
configuration" can be concluded to be relevant to understanding the
phenomenon, based on the facts presented.
Davies, William D. 1984. Choctaw Switch Reference and Levels of Syntactic
Representation. Syntax and Semantics 16: The Syntax of Native American
Languages, ed. by E.-D. Cook and Donna Gerdts, New York, San Francisco, and
London: Academic Press.
Davies, William D. 1986. Choctaw Verb Agreement and Universal Grammar.
Dordrecht: D. Reidel.
Farrell, Patrick, Stephen A. Marlett, and David M. Perlmutter. 1991.
Notions of Subjecthood and Switch Reference: Evidence from Seri. Linguistic
Inquiry 22.431-455.
--Patrick Farrell