LINGUIST List 13.1525

Sun May 26 2002

Qs: Eng Dictionaries, Reciprocals/Subject Argument

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Directory

  • 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 <baxterspurdue.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

    Message 2: reciprocal as a subject argument

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