At 16:34 10.03.1999 -0700, Rebecca S. Wheeler wrote: >I guess I'm concerned about calling NP subjects, NP Direct objects, and all >that stuff 'complements', even if it is traditionally done so. In that the >term 'complement' has become more specifically relativized to the final >term in "paint the barn teal" or "We made Jami president". I for one am concerned about calling each and every structure we find in the 'subject' slot of a sentence a noun phrase, regardless of what the structure is like (single noun, noun group or noun phrase,that-clause, what-sentence, chain, and what not). It's like saying that there are plants outside my window, there is a plant directly in front, there are plants on the ground, and several plants that take away the sun. The purpose of science is to distinguish between things, not to put them all in the same box. >Back on the valence type approach, I'm accustomed to referring to a verb as an n-ary argument structure -- that is, a verb takes 1, 2, 3 arguments. And that these arguments (1 NP subject argument for intransitive verbs -- like in "Dakota sleeps"; 1 NP subject and 1 NP object as in garden variety transitives -- "Jami planted 400 tulips"; or 3 arguments as in "Jami painted the door aubergine". Ok, once Tesniere had created the valence model, others jumped on the waggon (or maybe were already there). Anyway, it seems to me that the n-ary model is a step backwards (apart from the fact that it misses the metaphor that school students find quite helpful). The valence model describes a three-fold influence of the verb on the structure of sentences, not just one, namely 1. number of complemental parts (1,2,3) 2. types of parts (subject, etc) 3. structures allowed in the various slots (e.g. ing-form sentence in object slot, but not to-inf sentence) The 'traditional' distinction between sentence parts should not be chucked out without thinking twice, they have bearing on semantic and pragmatic problems. Of course, if a linguistic model puts these problems in a wastepaper basket called 'performance' ... But then it forgoes the description of the lifeblood of language. A linguistic model that does not deal with the content side and not with the usage side of language, is irrelevant as far as the school classroom is concerned, in particular the foreign language classroom. (Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying it is irrelevant as such. Whether a model is usable or not invariably depends on the purpose it is to be used for. There is no best or most adequate model in general, as the Chomsky people used to think. Any model is a tool for a specific purpose and must be judged by that purpose.) BTW, while Rebecca is concerned about the terms 'subject'..., I am concerned about 'transitive' and 'intransitive' - the valence model does away with these terms. Instead of having two main groups of verbs (object or no object), in the valence model we have seven, which are of equal importance - which is much nearer to the 'truth'. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Burkhard Leuschner - Paedagogische Hochschule Schwaebisch Gmuend, Germany E-mail: [log in to unmask] [h] Fax: +49 7383 2212 HTTP://WWW.PH-GMUEND.DE/PHG/PHONLINE/Englisch/index.htm