🚀 go-pugleaf

scobbie@Csli.Stanford.EDU (Jim Scobbie) writes:
>In <1992Jul31.142533.2915@memstvx1.memst.edu>
>connolly@memstvx1.memst.edu writes:
>
>
>>        What, me worry?  (Alfred E. Neuman)
>>        Him learn Russian?  Forget it!
>>
>
>Do you think there is a difference between "me worry?" and "me?
>worry?"
>("Why do you worry" "Me? Worry?")  What I mean is, is the 'worry'
>or the 'russian' in the examples you give an adjunct to the simple use
>of "me" and "him" in  echo questions. Possibly not, since straight
>responses
>of "me" or "him" can't be extended in a similar way.
>
>A: Did he speak?  B: Him?
>A: Did he speak?  B: Him speak?
>A: Did he speak?  B: Him do what?
>A: Did he speak?  B: Him be interesting?
>A: Did he speak?  B: Him break the habits of a lifetime?
>
>(all with *he)
>
>A: Who did this?  B: Me.
>A: Who did this?  B: Me, by accident.
>But
>A: Who did this?  B: *Me do.
>A: Who did this?  B: *I.
>A: Who did this?  B: I did.
>
>To what extent is it possible to echo the original question using
>different lexical items? It seems ok to me so long as there is
>some obvious inference that links, say, "speak" and "be interesting".
 
This construction is not typically used for answering questions, which
is why your last set of examples does not permit it.  It is rather
speculative and resumptive.
 
A semi-considered analysis is approximately as follows:
 
- In English and French, subject pronouns appear only before finite
(tensed) verbs.
 
- One-word answers therefore require object pronouns in these
languages.
 
- The use of objective forms in the the "Alfred E. Neuman construction"
indicates that the verb is not finite/tensed.  A null modal, which
would be tensed, therefore seems excluded.  Since something is lacking,
I referred to the sentences as "fragments" in the original post.  Maybe
"half-baked sentences" would have been a better name.
 
- The construction clearly differs in some important way from seemingly
untensed _that_-clauses, which, in the proposed analysis, must be
tensed.
 
        He suggested that I / *me be less obnoxious.
 
- The one-word objective answer, while revealing, is also misleading,
since it arises through deletion of a tensed verb (hence: "Who wants
some ice cream?" -- "Me!" but "I do").  The Russian situation differs
in that one-word nominative answers are OK.
 
- Though I suggested that the Neuman construction resembles the Russian
infinitival sentences cited, this remains to be shown, and I don't have
the knowledge of Russian to do so.

--Leo Connolly