linguistic absolutes
clayton stirling bartholomew
c.s.bartholomew at worldnet.att.net
Sun Apr 9 13:52:49 EDT 2000
Why all the fuss about pre-positive constituents and point of departure?
Levinsohn* seems to be establishing something very close to a linguistic
absolute in his treatment of this subject. There is an issue at stake here
which is somewhat broader than the question about the clause position of a
point of departure.
Lets say that language is chess board and that we have two grand masters
sitting down for a match and as they make their first few moves the Russian
player discovers that the bishop on his right has been glued to the board.
This changes the whole nature of the game. The bishop does not move. The
Russian player begins to suspect that their are other pieces which are glued
down and it makes his strategy fall to pieces.
If we think of language as a chess board, and the meaning of each piece is
defined by the state of the board at any given time in the history of the
language, then the discovery that certain pieces are glued to the board is
going to completely change our understanding of language. We are going to
end up wondering like the Russian grand master what other pieces are glued
to the board and our strategy may fall to pieces.
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