Outline for report #4: Case/adpositional systems (due Wednesday, 19 Feb). In this report you are to address the following question: What are the means employed by your language to indicate (or "encode") the relationship to (or roles played in) the performance of the action by the referents of the NPs selected by a given predicate? For example, English uses four different means to indicate the roles of Agent, Patient, and Recipient with the three-place (ditransitive) verb give in sentences like: (a) We gave her him (in marriage). [Not everyone finds (a) grammatical.] (b) We gave him to her. (c) She was given him (by us). (d) He was given to her (by us). 1. linear position: In active voice Agents precede, Patients follow the verb: (a) (b). 2. case: In active voice Agents get the nominative; others (if pronouns), the objective: (a)(b). 3. adpositions: With a ditransitive verb the NP preceded by to is the Recipient: (b) (d). 4. voice marking: If {be -en} is present the NP preceding the verb is not an Agent: (c) (d). (Voice marking is especially elaborate in some Austronesian languages: see Schachter) 5. head-marking ("polydiathesis"): Combines voice-marking with concord in person, number, and/or noun class (common in Bantu and PNG languages like Yimas). In a head-marking system neither position nor case of an NP is used to distinguish Agents from Patients. Instead, an NPUs grammatical function (GF) is indicated by cross-referencing agreement affixes on the verb. GF together with voice-marking is used to identify the participant role: (e) tyim sooz-ah-akh tsi gari they.NOM send-2sgSUBJ-3plOBJ you.NOM home 'You'll send them home.' (Kashmiri) 6. lexical idiosyncrasy: the meaning of the predicate is such that its subject or direct object or other NP is interpreted to bear a particular role to the action, even though in the language other means are usual for the expression of that particular role. Examples from English: the predicate use whose direct object plays the role of Instrument in some other action or the predicate emit whose subject is a Source which (with other predicates) would get an adposition like from or out of. With some predicates the thematic role of a given NP is ambiguous: the direct object of pick up in English can be either a Patient (f) or a Locus (g): (f) Pick up your clothes! (g) Pick up your room! Similarly, with straighten up: (h) Straighten up this desk! (when said to a child vs. to a carpenter) NB: Probably no language relies on just one of these six means. In (i), for instance, the Source is indicated by the adposition from, the linear position of me, and (redundantly) by the use, with a pronoun, of the objective case: (i) This came from me. Furthermore, some purely local or directional roles that an NP can play in an action are almost always indicated by adpositions: 'behind', 'in front of', 'around', 'from above', etc. There are dozens of locative distinctions and subdistinctions that a language must have the means to express; far too many to be distinguished by the non-lexical means given under 1, 2, 4, or 5. Finnish comes perhaps the closest to an TexhaustiveU case system: (j) Paradigm of Finnish talo- 'house' (partial): talo nominative (subject) talolle allative ('to') talon accusative (object) talona essive ('as') talon genitive ('of') taloa partitive ('[part] of') talossa inessive ('in') taloksi translative ('[changes] into') talosta elative ('out of') talotta abessive ('without') taloon illative ('into') taloin instructive ('with', 'by') talolla adessive ('on') taloine comitative ('together with') Again, some predicates express relationships that cannot be easily accommodated in the usual repertories of participant roles. How, for instance, should the participants role of the direct objects be formulated in the following? (k) Wiles has finally proved [Fermatt's last theorem]. (k') The moon's disk subtends [an angle of about one half degree]. Which roles are played in the performance of an action by the referents of the italicized NPUs in (l) through (ae)? What are the means employed to encode them? Roles: Agent, Patient (Theme), Force, Experiencer, Recipient, Source, Goal, Locus, Instrument, Beneficiary... (l) Mary sent John home. (m) John was sent home by Mary. (n) Mary sent them home. (o) They were sent home by Mary. (p) The wind blew down the fence. (q) The fence blew down with the wind. (r) That seemed odd to me. (s) That struck me as odd. (t) Mary gave a rose to John. (u) Mary gave John a rose. (v) We are walking to Pretoria. (w) We got these boards from the mill. (x) He is resting in his wing-chair. (y) Say it with flowers. (z) Win one for the Gipper. (aa) Peel me a grape. (ab) Monday precedes Tuesday. (ac)Tuesday follows Monday. (ad) Strip the bark from the tree. (ae) Strip the tree of bark. (af) Hit the ball up for him. (ag) Hit him up for the money. Report #4: Present an overview (with appropriate examples) of the grammatical ways and means by which the nine or ten roles in (l) through (aa) are indicated in your language. (Discussion or examples of Force may not be available...) In addition, if your language has case, present a paradigm like that under (j). Remember: Make a provisional selection of the topic for your coursepaper and submit an outline of it by Wednesday, 5 March. The Midterm (hour) Exam is on Monday, 10 March.Last modified 19 Feb 2003.