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Hi /sci/,
I'm not sure whether there are any linguists around here but i suppose this is the most appropriate board.
I don't understand this analysis. Can someone explain?
Why is the possessor assumed to be an internal argument? I thought internal argument meant the argument that is merged to the right of the head... surely the possessor is merged to the left and would thus be the specifier/external argument?
the way i understand it the whole analysis rests on the assumption that the possessor is the internal argument, am i wrong?
also, i can't follow the conclusions.. what exactly is this even supposed to prove?
i'm not well-versed in this kind of syntactic theory and in fact do not believe in most of it but i really need to understand this paper...
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>>8453083
Would probably have an easier time finding someone in a Humanity board, /his/, /lit/, etc.
Although this is very interesting, thanks
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>>8453083
your picture is basically saying that the language may not distinguish between verbs and nouns, using the fact that it uses identical affixes or whatever theyre called to modify both nouns and verbs
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>general point
I believe they're saying that the same morphemes seem to apply to both nouns and verbs, but that doesn't mean that nouns and verbs are the same category. For instance, this language uses what looks like the same morpheme is used to mark singular number on nouns and to mark 3rd person on verbs (16a). There's another morpheme which seems to mark possessor on nouns as well as subjects on verbs (16b). Same thing for 16c. You might look at that and conclude that there is no way to differentiate nouns and verbs in this language, so the generative grammar of the language (ie the knowledge state of speakers who know this language) does not have "noun" and "verb" as different syntactic categories. But if you look at what the morphemes are doing semantically, as in 17, it depends on whether the word it attaches to is a noun or a verb.
>why is the possessor an internal argument... it isn't merged to the right of the head
good point. the notion "merged to the right of the head" doesn't exist in a syntactic theory with "merge." when two constituents are merged, there are dominance relations, but no left-to-right linear precedence. the order of elements is thought to be imposed as part of the articulation of the structure, but it's not part of the syntactic representation. so an internal argument is just the complement of V, and it doesn't matter if it appears to the left or right of V in the externalization.
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