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> My own difficulty with adverbs and case tags is just determining when a given word is meant as an adverb and when as a case tag, since case tag seems to be just an odd name for 'open adverb', which is not used, and there are no case markings in the language. > > stevo Well, as far as I understand the difference it is basically a difference between intransitive and di/transitive. As in any X-x verb would become an adverb. So P-s or 0 or whatever would become an adverb. This then means that all case tags are X/Y-x or X/Y/Z-x. I suspect then that a case tag could then be called an open adverb. Also, it seems to overlap quite a lot with serial verbs. This seems to indicate something along the lines of "verb(P-s) adverb(P-s) patient". However what about the case of of "verb(P-s) adverb(AP-s) patient"? I would suspect that this is still simply imply that the patient of the verb is the agent-patient of the adverb. How does this work with a "verb(A/P-s) adverb(AP-s) agent patient", or simply moving the adverb "verb(A/P-s) agent adverb(AP-s) patient"? But the same doesn't apply to case tags as far as I can tell "verb(A/P-s) case-tag(A/P-s) agent patient" doesn't seem to be correct from what I understand. I suspect it should be "verb(A/P-s) agent patient case-tag(A/P-s) secondary-agent secondary-patient" (moving the case tag around seems to just topicalize/promote it). However I think the first example is legal in the language, what it means/implies I don't know however. Also what it implies when the argument structure of the case-tag is different from the verb I also don't know. As far as I can tell the case tags aren't strictly necessary since the agent patient focus must be in the order showed by the verb, thus a P/A/F-s verb would require the arguments be "P A F", while a A/P/F-s would require same making case markings on the noun redundant... As far as I can tell though that oblique arguments are the only things that can truly be moved around. Moving the patient to the subject position on a A/P-s verb would make it the agent instead. I'm rambling. If any of that makes sense I'm glad, I don't know whether it does.