time flies like an arrow and the notion of sentence

Chet Creider creider at csd.uwo.ca
Fri Jul 27 15:01:23 EDT 2001


> From: Jonathan Robie <Jonathan.Robie at SoftwareAG-USA.com>
> 
> At 11:54 AM 7/27/2001 -0400, Chet Creider wrote:
> 
> >The only points are that some kind of structural units are appropriate to
> >account for these data (which include various kinds of what are
> >traditionally called dependent clauses)
> 
> I think your example does demonstrate that clauses are needed - and clauses 
> were all that I used in my solution.
> 
> >and that one of these units
> >will be a sentence (whatever it may be called in a particular theory is
> >not relevant).
> 
> If clauses provide the disambiguation sufficiently, then I don't think your 
> example proves your point.

Consider the following two interpretations:

(1) I have no feelings whatsoever when we're apart / I can be forever happy
(2) I have no feelings whatsoever / when we're apart I can be forever happy

Calling the larger unit which contains the two smaller units a clause
rather than a sentence is fine if you allow clauses to be self-embedding.
If not (my unspoken assumption -- I should have mentioned this), then
another unit is needed.  I don't think many linguists would object to
the former analysis (I don't myself), but the traditional analysis,
considering clause as a minimal unit is also acceptable, I think, for
English, and for that subset of NT Greek which is like English (i.e.
participial phrases, relative clauses, INA complements, etc.).  But
the more paratactic connections are the ones I'm unsure about.

Chet Creider



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