Craig,
Thank you. I guess what confused me is that your condition about the subject
of the "ergative" being potentially an object of a transitive version of the
same verb is necessary but not sufficient.
Bruce
>>> [log in to unmask] 11/2/2005 10:09:12 AM >>>
Bruce,
I think we understand something fundamentally different in Sue cooked for an
hour and The rice cooked for an hour. (If nothing else, Sue won't dry out from
overcooking. She won't burn. And the rice won't get tired.) Calling both
intransitive doesn't do justice to the differences. Calling Sue an actor
(cooker) and rice a medium, one clause intransitive and the other clause
ergative works for me as a way to say that the surface similarities are
misleading. I'm not sure how blunt that is. Like much grammar, we don't "see
it" entirely on the page. The same would be true for "I mowed all lawns" and "I
mowed all days." Until we consult our internal grammar, we would be apt to say
they are the same.
I have copies of my book in hand, since Monday; others I'm told are on
their way to the states. The stateside distributor is The David Brown Book Co.
PO Box 511 Oakville CT 06779. (toll free # 800-791-9354.) It retails for
$26.95, and they ask $4.50 for the first book and $1.50 for each one after to
cover shipping..
Anyone requesting an inspection copy for possible classroom adoption can do
so directly to Equinox Publishing Ltd. ,Unit 6, The Village, 101 Amies St.
London SW11 2JW, United Kingdom. Their policy is to ask for return of the
book in 60 days or payment for it if it doesn't get adopted.
The desk copy request sheet I had at the ATEG conference somehow
disappeared during the conference, so anyone who signed up and still wants a
review copy (or anyone else) should email me off list.
It is very kind of you to ask.
Craig
Bruce Despain wrote:
Craig,
This COULD be goal is kind of arbitrary, isn't it?
Mary hit the target. (transitive)
Mary hit away. (intransitive)
*The target hit. (could be goal but no "ergative" possible)
I can see that possible ergatives contrast with the transitives, but the
existence of an intransitive that somehow deeply involves the goal seems
important in making the transition implied in the example. Is the relationship
between the semantics and the syntax even statable in blunt terms?
BTW: I noticed the announcement for your new book. Am I right to assume that
the paperback is not available in the U.S.?
Bruce
>>> [log in to unmask] 11/2/2005 7:52:23 AM >>>
Bill,
My own earlier examples are from the Introduction as well. I'm not sure,
but I think he is setting up "ergative" as a separate category from
"intransitive" because he also gives transitive/intransitive pairs. It's
possible to give an example of all three.
Mary sailed the boat. (transitive)
Mary sailed all day. (intransitive)
The boat sailed. (ergative)
Some verbs (like hunted) won't lend themselves to that. To focus on the lion,
we have to make the sentence passive.
The tourist hunted.
The tourist hunted the lion.
The lion was hunted by the tourist.
The lion hunted represents a changed hunter and has potential goal (tourist) of
its own..
To be ergative, I think you need the notion that the medium COULD be goal in a
different kind of rendering. If intransitive, it would definitely be a clear
subcategory.
Traditional categories of transitivity are enormously important, but also
unsatisfying in so many ways. They allow us to classify sentences, but those
classifications aren't always a great deal of help (very blunt instruments) when
it comes to describing how these clauses represent the world. His
classifications work enormously well in the interpretation (interpretive
analysis) of text. I feel that they help me move more deeply into meaning and
away from mere observations of form. Students seem to feel that way as well.
Craig
Spruiell, William C wrote:
Johanna,Halliday uses the term "ergative" in a wider sense than it's used
indescriptions of, say, Basque; "ergativesque" might be a better rendering(open
admission: I like Halliday's theory, but don't like some of hislabel choices).
He deploys it to discuss differences between twodifferent types of
transitive/intransitive verb pairs (examples from 3rdedition of his
_Introduction_, 2004.288):1.a The tourist hunted.1.b The tourist hunted the
lion.2.a The tourist woke.2.b The lion woke the tourist.H. describes
the relation between 2.a and 2.b as being an ergative one.The tourist is an
Actor in 2.a, and a Goal (to use H.'s term) in 2.b,"yet it is the tourist who
stopped sleeping in both cases."I think anyone interested in the behavior of
English verbs would want toacknowledge a systematic difference between verbs
like "hunt" and verbslike "wake", and between the intransitive and transitive
versions of oneand those of the other; in some ways, this is similar to material
indiscussions I've seen on verbal semantics, e.g. Vendler. If you have
abackground in anthropological linguistics or native American
languages,"ergative" may seem to be a potentially problematic label, but
itdoesn't cause any difficulties internal to the theory.Bill
Spruiell-----Original Message-----From: Assembly for the Teaching of English
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