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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