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Lennart LönngrenUniversity of Tromsø

LOVE

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Let us start with a sentence in the active voice and its passive counterpart.

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Everybody loves her.

She is loved by everybody.

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The preposition by in the passive sentence must be marked as syntactic: it does not occupy a node in the semantic

representation.

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Everybody loves her.

She is loved (by) everybody.

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Is in is loved, as opposed to was in was loved, is a tense marker, functioning as a

predicate. The carrier of the corresponding meaning in the active

sentence is a morpheme, which we mark as incorporated.

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Everybody love<s> her.

She is loved (by) everybody.

Alternatively, we could extract a portmanteau morpheme from is: (is)<PRES>, but that would be an unnecessary complication.

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This is not a complete representation. The tense markers in both sentences function as a two-place predicate, the first valency

position of which is occupied by the implicit speech act verb «say».

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Everybody love<s> her.

She is loved (by) everybody.

«s.»

«s.»

«s.» = «(I) say»

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The implicit verb also dominates the syntactic top node, i.e. love.

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Everybody love<s> her.

She is loved (by) everybody.

«s.»

«s.»

«s.» = «(I) say»

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In the following tense markers and speech act predicates will be disregarded.

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Everybody love<s> her.

She is loved (by) everybody.

«s.»

«s.»

«s.» = «(I) say»

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Everybody loves her.

She (is) loved (by) everybody.

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Now let us compare an ordinary sentence with its cleft counterpart.

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I love Mary.

It is Mary that I love.

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Three words in the cleft sentence are syntactic. (The topicalization of Mary can be handled by a special implicit predicate, which we disregard here.)

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I love Mary.

(It is) Mary (that) I love.

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He loved his new car.

The object of his love was his new car.

Paraphrases can also be created by means of certain role-markers:

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We mark four of the words in the paraphrase as syntactic.

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He loved his new car.

(The object of) his love (was) his new car.

Note that his in his love is not a predicate, whereas his in his car is a two-place predicate.

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The same syntactic function as object can be fulfilled by a derivative of the

verb, meaning ’object of love’. Compare:

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He loved only Mary.

Mary was the only one he loved.

Mary was his only love.

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He loved only Mary.

Mary (was the) only (one) he loved.

Mary (was) his only (love)<love>.

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In a small shop in Tucson I found the following text:

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Choose your love

Love your choice

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Instead of buying it and putting it on the wall I decided to analyse it.

The first step is to extract the verbs out of the nouns love and choice. After

that we can easily establish the subject and object relations.

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Choose your love<love>

Love your choice<choose>

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Finally, let us conflate the two parts into one sentence. The comma separating the clauses

represents a two-place predicate with the meaning «then».

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Choose your love<love>,

love your choice<choose>.

, (comma/pause) = «then»

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Now we can compare this sentence with a more basic and explicit paraphrase:

Choose the person you love,then love the person you chose.

… or still more explicitly:

Choose the person that you love,then love the person that you chose.

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We see that the object relation arrows in each clause now point to two

separate words. These are connected by means of the definite article, here with

a cataphoric function.

Choose the person that you love.

The content of the connection is coreferentiality.

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Note also in the explicit paraphrase the different tenses: … you love vs … you chose.

To account for this we must extract the corresponding tense morphemes:

Choose the person you love<PRES>,

Love the person you chose<PRET>,

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Choose your love<love>«PRES»,

love your choice<choose>«PRET».

In the original sentence this difference is totally implicit, but we can still represent it:

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The difference in tense can be traced back to a semantic distinction between the two verbs,

namely the opposition athelic / thelic.

THE END

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Whoops, I forgot overt derivatives, i.e. words formed from love and its equivalents by

means of suffixation.

cat <lov>er

Mary’s <lov>er

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In Russian, different nouns are used in this case.

<ljubi>tel’ koshek

Mashin <ljubov>nik

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There are also derivatives expressing the converse relation.

<ljubim>ec caricy

the queen’s «like» favourite

min <älsk>lingsmelodi

my favourite tune

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Empty verbs in English:

Peter (makes) love (to) Mary.

Peter älskar (med) Mary.

Mary (fell in) love (with) Peter.

Mary förälskade (sig i) Peter.

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Cf. also the paraphrases:

Peter (is) Mary’s (<lov>er).

Peter (makes) love (to) Mary.

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In Russian, the equivalent of make love cannot realize the second position.

Oni (zanimajutsja) ljubov’ju.

They (make) love.

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Moi <ljubim>ye menja zhdali.

The following could be a way of representing substantivized adjectives and participles.

My loved ones (were) waiting (for) me.

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Now truly:

THE END