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> saluton, kapitano, Kaj saluton al vi.i guess ram's observation was that while modeling a language, there are very often arguments that are very close to the verb, so that it seems obvious to call them core arguments... i also was wondering if we could use core arguments with special ... rolmontriloj ... "prepositions", but that's just a question of implementation (a question of how you want to represent core arguments). i mean: core arguments exists, don't you think?Yes, but I'm not sure that they're necessary. And I'm not sure that the core argument structure of verbs in the source language should be retained in the translation interlanguage. Partly because the 'equivilent' verb in the target language may have a different core structure. And partly because I think it makes the interlanguage unnecessarily rigid, which may cause problems when translating unusual or highly idiomatic sentences. The sentence... 'The child silently put the large battered book on the dusty table.' ...can be analysed like this: Verb(1): Put Verb(2): Silent Agent: Child Patient(1): Book Patient(2): Battered Patient(3): Large Destination(1): Table Destination(2): Dusty Instrument: [none] Location: [none] Beneficiary: [none] Tense: Past Aspect: Completed (Note that I'm not (at the moment) making a destinction between Patient and Focus. Note also that some of the roles can be filled with more than one term - not necessarily with one of the terms being the head and the others being modifiers. This goes also for the verbs, which can be regarded as being contained within their own prepositional phrase. Finally, some of the arguments are left blank.) In English, the example sentence 'The child silently put the large battered book on the dusty table.' actually has *six* core arguments: The Agent The Patient The Destination The Tense The Aspect The *Verb* And yet we have no qualms about turning tense and aspect into oblique arguments in an interlanguage. Indeed, any subset of those six could happily be made oblique or omitted, and we would be left with a stable propositional structure. We may no longer be obliged to specify *where* the book was placed, or who placed it there, but the result is still meaningful. It still conveys information. I realise that I've made a switch from lexical semantics to sentential semantics And that I'm treating the verb as an argument of the sentence, rather than the nouns as aruments of the (main) verb.
what is a sentence without verb? i wouldn't have tried and made the verb an argument of the sentence. please explain.
the rest i think to understand quite well. and i think you're right. thank you!but the consequence is that the core arguments should remain, and that all the other stuff like tense should be added to it (which would simply mean that everything is an argument that can be reduced to middle-voiced, passive-voiced or simply not mentioned).
This is obviously a different design philosophy from that of Katanda, but I suspect that some problems Rick has identified in Katanda are the result of beginning with morphemes and building them into sentences, as opposed to beginning with sentences and breaking them down into semantic units. I'm quite prepared to be proven wrong on this. Perhaps Rick could say why he views morphemes rather than sentences as the 'units' of communication.
stefo, sts.