336 ER:786 Yeah, the bull, they butcher the bull. But this other bull come in maybe two year, they
going send for breed. Then they look how the meat, how heavy the bone or that one. They go by the weight, eh. They look this one, maybe smaller, eh, smaller body or what. Not enough, they butcher.
Every time, they pick up like that. Then us guys, eh, the boss, the chief cowboy, he train us. Train us, look this one, what the body, some big, some broad. See, the broad kind, that’s heavy. That’s da kine
they like. They like because they figure get weight, yeah, on the meat, when you take to weigh. Some they look, narrow, they say no good, this bull. Then sometime us guys, we don’t know too, we ask
questions. Why no good? He say why no good, because the bull, just like lean, no more weight. You raise ’em up maybe two year or three year, by the time you kill ’em, no more weight. And this other one, you
look the body, broad. This guy, even small, he get weight.
ER:851 Yeah. He tell, you make on the floor first. Smart though, how he make. You make from the floor bumbai you get the floor, then you like do the wall, up. You take from the floor, you measure, then
you cut your board. Then bumbai when you stand ’em up, everything all right. You measure from the floor, that side and this side. Not easy kind. He teach me. That’s why I know how to make carpenter,
too, little bit.
The above sentences are not quite as semantically simple as we would like, but they can be explicated fairly simply along the following lines:
140 a. someone else knows how to do carpentry
b. I know the same thing I submit therefore that HCE does, in fact, have a mechanism to realize THE SAME in combination
with the mental predicates.
6.4 Activities and events: DO and HAPPEN
All of the following valences for DO were found in our corpus search: DO SOMETHING
DO THIS DO THE SAME
DO X TO ME DO X TO YOU
DO X TO SOMEONE DO X TO SOMETHING
This leaves us two valences unaccounted for: DO X TO PEOPLE
DO X TO THIS
The situation is identical with the primitive HAPPEN. A search of the corpus uncovered convincing evidence for the following NSM syntactic configurations:
337 SOMETHING HAPPENED
THIS HAPPENED THE SAME HAPPENED
X HAPPENED TO ME X HAPPENED TO YOU
X HAPPENED TO SOMEONE X HAPPENED TO SOMETHING
Two valences are left unaccounted for: X HAPPENED TO PEOPLE
X HAPPENED TO THIS
The first absent valences of both HAPPEN and DO are accidental gaps in our data. The following sentences sound perfectly acceptable to me.
141 dae gai, hi du onli baed tings tu pipo
‘That guy only does bad things to people’ 142 hau kam, laes wik, so mach baed haepn tu pipo
‘Why did so many bad things happen to people last week?’ The second valence, I would like to argue, is unnecessary. The combination DO X TO THIS THING
which is subsumed under the frame DO X TO SOMETHING is an alternative to DO X TO THIS. Likewise, the combination X HAPPENED TO THIS THING which is subsumed under the frame X
HAPPENED TO SOMETHING is an alternative phrasing of X HAPPENED TO THIS.
6.5 Determiners: THIS, THE SAME, OTHER 6.5.1 THIS
The following combinations were found in our corpus: THIS OTHER X
THISTHESE TWO X THIS PERSON
THIS THING THIS PLACE
THIS TIME THIS KIND
THIS PART
We are missing evidence for the following combination:
338 THIS ONE X
I would like to argue that this valence is incidental, i.e., that it is not needed in NSM. The reason is the bare THIS X is already inherently singular. If this is so, what semantic contribution does it make to
the whole expression?
6.5.2 THE SAME
We have found textual evidence for the following valences: THE SAME PERSON
THE SAME THING THE SAME TIME
THE SAME PLACE X IS THE SAME KIND AS Y
X DID THE SAME AS Y
The following combination was missing: THE SAME PART
The absence of this combination is accidental. First of all, we do have an example of a determiner combining with PART. Secondly, the primitive PART is rare in our corpus. In fact, we shall be missing
“PART”’s elsewhere in this study as well.
6.5.3 OTHER
Our search uncovered the following combinations: OTHER PERSON
OTHER THING OTHER TIME
OTHER KIND OTHER PART
The proposed valence OTHER THAN was the only one missing from our corpus. There are substantial number of tokens of ada in our corpus almost 500, so I do not think that its
absence is accidental. W’s endorsement of this valence is somewhat luke-warm, and indeed I think that this valence may be decomposed along the following lines:
143 SOMEONE OTHER THAN JOHN
a. another person, not John
339
6.6 Quantifiers: ONE, TWO, MANYMUCH, ALL 6.6.1 ONE
All of the valences of ONE were found in this study. ONE PERSON
ONE THING ONE TIME
ONE PLACE ONE KIND
ONE TIME ONE PART
ONE OF X
ONE PART was somewhat problematic, but indirect evidence was found. Again, as stated above, all missing combinations involving PART are likely to be accident gaps because of the rarity of PART in our
data.
6.6.2 TWO
The following NSM syntactic combinations were found in our corpus: TWO PERSONS
TWO THINGS TWO TIMESS
TWO KINDS TWO PARTS
TWO OF X
The following combination was missing from our data: TWO PLACES
The evidence for TWO PARTS is sparse and indirect, but, I believe, sufficient. The absence of TWO PLACES is accidental, I believe. The following sentence sounds fine in HCE:
144 ai kaen go fish onli tu pleisaz ‘I can fish in only two places’
6.6.3 MANYMUCH
The following combinations involving MANYMUCH were found in our search:
340 MANY PERSONS
MANY THINGS MANY TIMES
MANY KINDS MANY PLACES
MANYMUCH OF X X KNOW MUCH ABOUT Y
X SAID MUCH ABOUT Y
The following valence was missing from our corpus: MANY PARTS
I believe its absence is accidental; the following sentence is perfectly acceptable: 145 da ting get pleni pat insai
‘There are lots of parts inside of this thing’
6.6.4 ALL
We have found examples of the following NSM syntactic configurations in our corpus: ALL PERSONS
ALL THINGS ALL PLACES
ALL TIMES ALL OF X
X KNOW ALL ABOUT Y X SAID ALL ABOUT Y
The following syntactic configurations were missing from our corpus: ALL KINDS
ALL PARTS
ALL PARTS is likely an accidental omission. The following sentence is perfectly grammatical: 146 ao pat get ras
‘All parts have rust’ As I argued in my critique of NSM section 2.7.2.3, the combination ALL KINDS is not an expressible
meaning in any language, so its absence is inconsequential.
341
6.7 Evaluators: GOOD, BAD
This investigation found examples of the following valences for GOOD in our corpus: GOOD PERSON
GOOD PEOPLE GOOD THING
I AM GOOD YOU ARE GOOD
SOMETHING IS GOOD THIS IS GOOD
X IS GOOD FOR ME X IS GOOD FOR YOU
X IS GOOD FOR SOMEONE X IS GOOD FOR PEOPLE
YOU ARE A GOOD PERSON SOMEONE IS A GOOD PERSON
Currently we are missing only a single valence: PEOPLE ARE GOOD
I regard this as an accidental omission. The following sentence is acceptable: 147 no gud, pipo. dei ao pilau bagas
‘People are not good. All of them are rotten so-and-so’s.’ For BAD the following syntactic configurations were found:
BAD PERSON BAD THING
PEOPLE ARE BAD SOMEONE IS BAD
SOMETHING IS BAD THIS IS BAD
YOU ARE A BAD PERSON
A fair number of syntactic configurations for BAD are missing:
342 BAD PEOPLE
I AM BAD YOU ARE BAD
X IS BAD FOR ME X IS BAD FOR YOU
X IS BAD FOR PEOPLE X IS BAD FOR SOMEONE
I must regard all of these absences as accidental. BAD is a rare form in our corpus. Furthermore, the fact that we were able to find all the valences of GOOD with one exception should make us suspicious
of these absences. Although I will not list out in detail example sentences, generally BAD may occur in the same contexts where GOOD is found.
6.8 Qualities: BIG, SMALL
