tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13177437.post2181239278812054846..comments2024-03-09T09:19:07.054+01:00Comments on Jabal al-Lughat: Too strong to get outLameen Souag الأمين سواقhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00773164776222840428noreply@blogger.comBlogger9125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13177437.post-58455752479066592352017-07-17T11:30:55.505+02:002017-07-17T11:30:55.505+02:00My humble interpretation:
"Get" has two...My humble interpretation:<br /><br />"Get" has two main domains of meaning, "become" or "come/reach", and "obtain"/"retrieve".<br /><br />For some reason, the first area seems dominant in the sense that in an ambiguous context, the verb defaults to the second meaning.<br /><br />Why is that? Hard to say. With the meaning "become" (which is not relevant here, but sytactically comparable), "get" is an important structure word, more like a copula than a regular verb from the lexicon. Particularly consider the special case when "get" is combined not with primary adjective, but a participle (e.g. "get pulled out"): This is already (or almost?) an alternative passive form, so a grammaticalized rather than lexical function. This might help explain its dominance.<br /><br />Moreover, in this particular context, the transitive interpretation "get someone out" is probably a lot rarer than "(manage to) get out". Again, that has an effect in ambiguous sentences.<br /><br />And yes, there is so much to learn about language from toddlers ...<br /><br /><br />Blasius Blasebalgnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13177437.post-68079891697605528962017-01-20T01:01:55.836+01:002017-01-20T01:01:55.836+01:00Seems verb lability is productive in English. At f...Seems verb lability is productive in English. At first reading, I interpreted your nephew's 'destroy' as 'self-destruct', but am re-reading.petrenoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13177437.post-15783279946479980692017-01-10T01:59:32.835+01:002017-01-10T01:59:32.835+01:00Forgot to mention that heißen also means "to ...Forgot to mention that <i>heißen</i> also means "to mean" as in "to have a meaning": <i>das heißt</i> "that means".David Marjanovićnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13177437.post-30316819597485844502016-12-30T20:32:50.636+01:002016-12-30T20:32:50.636+01:00is the construction also ambiguous there?
No; &qu...<i>is the construction also ambiguous there?</i><br /><br />No; "too strong that I could get out" would be <i>zum Herauskommen</i>. We have plenty of polysemous verbs, but English <i>get</i> is simply impossible to catch up with. :-)<br /><br /><i>zero-derived passives</i><br /><br />Speaking of those and German... we've got one: <i>heißen</i>, "to be called" in the sense of having a name, whose active senses ("to call so. sth.", "to tell/order so. to do sth.") have died out within the last century. Diachronically, the passive sense is the last survival of the synthetic passive, which was productive in Gothic but came to sound the same as the active after a thousand years of continued neglect of unstressed syllables.David Marjanovićnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13177437.post-43997520208157064272016-12-30T00:11:37.927+01:002016-12-30T00:11:37.927+01:00I see. To compare apples and apples, "I am to...I see. To compare apples and apples, "I am too strong to destroy" (i.e. be destroyed) is grammatical in standard English. "I am too strong to get out" (i.e. be gotten out) is not quite so. Perhaps it's because the latter is a phrasal verb?Ynoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13177437.post-59438482314507364662016-12-29T22:55:03.372+01:002016-12-29T22:55:03.372+01:00Y: "Get out" is labile in standard Engli...Y: "Get out" is labile in standard English too: he got out safely vs. he got him out. So the problem with that sentence lies elsewhere.<br /><br />Many West African languages (Mande, at least) use zero-derived passives, effectively making every verb labile, so substratum influence seems conceivable in Trinidad...<br /><br />David: Interesting to know that works better in German - is the construction also ambiguous there?Lameen Souag الأمين سواقhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00773164776222840428noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13177437.post-79335962634938067882016-12-28T22:30:33.355+01:002016-12-28T22:30:33.355+01:00Oh, forgot:
So if anything is going wrong in this...Oh, forgot:<br /><br /><i>So if anything is going wrong in this sentence, it's not so much the syntax as the pragmatics: an adult speaker </i>might<i> be more aware that listeners could have trouble processing a clause of this form, and avoid it in favour of something less ambiguous.</i><br /><br />I think this happens a lot. I've probably undergone this development myself, and still occasionally recapitulate it.David Marjanovićnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13177437.post-79388955635851302592016-12-28T22:29:15.787+01:002016-12-28T22:29:15.787+01:00Passive "destroy" can't be German, w...Passive "destroy" can't be German, which has a lot fewer labile verbs than English. But passive "get out" could be: it is possible (though it wouldn't be preferred in this case) to say such things without any pronoun or person at all – <i>ich bin zu stark zum Herauskriegen</i>, basically "I'm too strong *for the getting-out", more literally of course with "to" instead of "for".David Marjanovićnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13177437.post-73327195092941397012016-12-28T05:45:06.452+01:002016-12-28T05:45:06.452+01:00I don't understand. For both "destroy&quo...I don't understand. For both "destroy" and "get out" the semantic patient is the preceding syntactic subject, absent a syntactic object. How are the examples distinct?<br /><br />Aside, many verbs (maybe all?) are labile in the Trinidadian Creole of Naipaul's novels, as opposed to Standard English, where Labile verbs are a closed set. Maybe your nephew and creole speakers followed similar paths to express the passive?Ynoreply@blogger.com