[YG Conlang Archives] > [katanda group] > messages [Date Index] [Thread Index] >
lesson 4: what's this about: i want to suggest to introduce into the mti 1. a suffix similar to -se, but which indicates that the patient is equal to the focus of the main verb. 2. again: a fourth core argument. (any modal disjunct should have this kind of argument, in my opinion.) let's analyse this sentence: "i hear the radio in front of the buidling". (hear: P/F-s) i want to say that i detect the radio, detecting that it is in front of the building, then a possible sollution could be: "i hear that the radio is in front of the building" but this sentence is ambigious. it could also mean that somebody tells me that the radio is in front of the building. the problem lies in the modality of the sentence "the radio is in front of the building". is it according to what somebody tells me, or is it according to how i hear (detect with my ears) the radio? i think it is no problem to say "i hear (somebody saying) that the radio is in front of the building". but linking the sentence "the radio is in front of the building" to the verb "hear the radio" is more difficult, as it doesn't seem possible to me yet. once again, this is an example for the neccessity of a fourth argument in the argument structure of a verb, a modality argument, so to say. "i hear the radio in front of the building" -> hear patient: I focus: the radio modality argument: (is) in front of the building here, "(is)" must be tagged to indicate that it's patient is the focus of the main verb, which is similar to the participle/infintive-"se", which indicates that it's patient is equal to the _patient_ of the main verb. the result is a verb like "being", but not in the se-sence. -> "i hear the radio being in front of the building". with such a kind of suffix it should be also possible to distinguish expressions like "i want him to go" and "i want that he goes" because in the first expression we could use that focus -> patient suffix. (the second sentence is ambigious, as it doesn't tell whether he is actually going, which is wanted, or if his going exists only in my will. the first sentence _must_ mean that it is only wanted that he goes, he doesn't go actually, yet.) sts.