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b-hebrew - Re: [b-hebrew] Placeholders: )$R w/o antecedent

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  • From: Peter Kirk <peterkirk AT qaya.org>
  • To: "C. Stirling Bartholomew" <jacksonpollock AT earthlink.net>
  • Cc: hebrew <b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Placeholders: )$R w/o antecedent
  • Date: Thu, 21 Oct 2004 10:12:42 +0500

On 21/10/2004 02:27, C. Stirling Bartholomew wrote:

In a previous discussion I called into question the use of empty
constituents, a.k.a. placeholders, to mark the position of a fictitious
antecedent in the analysis of )$R where it functions as a relative and has
no antecedent, "Headless Relative."

While fully admitting that I do this mentally while trying to sort out a
complex clause structure, that is a far cry from the incorporation of dummy
constituents into formal syntax theory. K.Lambrecht:1994* agrees that this
is a bad policy. If your language model requires traces and placeholders for
the analysis of syntax, semantics and information structure that is an
indication that the model is defective.


I am not sure that it is correct to think of these constituents as dummies or placeholders. It seems to me that they are real constituents of a real sentence. Hebrew 'asher seems to me to work rather like (colloquial) Azerbaijani ki, whose syntactical function is clear to me. (ki is rather deprecated in formal written Azerbaijani.) ki is a conjunction, not a pronoun. What follows ki, or 'asher, is a fully formed sentence, with a pronoun used for the constituent which is linked with the main clause. But this pronoun is dropped if it is the subject in the same way that any pronoun subject can be dropped. And sometimes it is dropped if it is the object or another constituent, if there is no ambiguity, just as in normal sentences the object or other constituent can sometimes be dropped if clear from the context.

As for what precedes ki (or 'asher), the antecedent can be either a whole sentence (in which case the ki clause is at the end) or an individual noun phrase (in which case the ki clause follows it).

Does that way of looking at 'asher help you?

--
Peter Kirk
peter AT qaya.org (personal)
peterkirk AT qaya.org (work)
http://www.qaya.org/






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