NetNews Usenet Archive 1993 #3/NN_1993_3.iso/spool/sci/lang/9025

Internet Message Format | 1993-01-28 | 2.0 KB

Path: sparky!uunet!tdat!tools3!swf
From: [e-mail] (Stan Friesen)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: Subject and object confusion (Was: Re: "n'ha"...)
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Date: 28 Jan 93 16:52:33 GMT
References: <[e-mail]> <[e-mail]> <[e-mail]> <[e-mail]> <[e-mail]>
Sender: [e-mail]
Distribution: world
Organization: NCR Teradata Database Business Unit
Lines: 31

In article <[e-mail]>, [e-mail] writes:
|>
|> Strangely, an SVO reading for that example is quite unlikely, in my opinion.
|> Indefinite subjects can precede the verb, though they are not likely to
|> do so; but there's a logical problem: SVO would, to me, entail that the
|> cat then took some action because it had seen Tom: "A cat saw Tom and
|> reported this to the proper authorities."  However, I wouldn't
|> find this entailment with a verb such as _beobachten_ 'observe', though
|> I don't know why not.  The normal way to say 'A cat saw Tom' is:
|>
|>     Dann hat eine Katze Tom gesehen.
|>
|> This can only be read as XVSO, not XVOS: word order disambiguates in
|> this instance (which is not to say that XVOS is not legal with a few
|> verbs such as _gefallen_ 'be pleasing', provided that O is definite).

Interesting.  This seems to make a case for German being fundamentally an
[X]VSO language, with the initial position tending to indicate topicality.

That is, your interpretation of 'Eine Katze sah Tom' is as a form that
*introduces* a new topical entity, the cat.  (Which is only meaningful
if you intend to say *more* about the cat, as you suggest above].

The alternate form has a 'filler' (dann) in the initial position, and thus lacks
any topical element.  I tend to read the 'dann ..' form as being rather
generic, or 'remote'.

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