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Date: | Thu, 14 Oct 1999 17:09:30 -0800 |
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I'm with Martha on all counts. It's a little dangerous to take too
seriously the transformationalist idea that sentences like 'S. has a
migraine that is in her foot' as transformations of those like 'S. has a
migraine in her foot'. I find it more reliable to use form tests such as
Martha suggests (moving the phrase in question).
In her foot, Sally has a migraine.
*About history, Sally has a book.
In the latter case the failure of movement shows that 'about history' is
modifying 'book', not 'has'.
Also, I suggest not using semantically bizarre sentences for grammar
study. There are lot of grammatical phenomena (such as whether a verb +
preposition sequence is a verb-particle construction ('run up a bill')
vs. a verb + PP ('run up a hill) that are semantically controlled
through idioms and the possible complements that verbs require/allow.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Johanna Rubba Assistant Professor, Linguistics
English Department, California Polytechnic State University
One Grand Avenue • San Luis Obispo, CA 93407
Tel. (805)-756-2184 • Fax: (805)-756-6374 • Dept. Phone. 756-259
• E-mail: [log in to unmask] • Home page: http://www.calpoly.edu/~jrubba
**
"Understanding is a lot like sex; it's got a practical purpose,
but that's not why people do it normally" - Frank Oppenheimer
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