Talk:Attributive verb

Reconciliation needed for "attributive verb" definition, article title, and examples given

In this article's first sentence, it's unclear what the "attributive verb" definition implies by asserting that it's a "verb that modifies (expresses an attribute of) a noun." That definition conflicts with the second sentence, which implies that "attributive verb" is conceptually limited to participles and infinitives (which, I presume are further limited to to-infinitive phrases). I suggest that the initial definition might be clearer if reworded, e.g., "An attributive verb is a form of verb that functions as an attributive adjective without comprising a predicate." Although such a revision reflects the thrust of this article's second sentence, the article's title then becomes suspect. "Attributive verb form" might be an apt title. The notion of an attributive verb doesn't resonate with me. Indeed, all of the examples offered in the "English" section relate to participles or to to-infinitive phrases and not to canonical verbs. I.e.:

• The cat sitting on the fence is mine. < present participle
• The actor given the prize is not my favorite. < past participle
• This is a great place to eat. < to-infinitive phrase
• It was a very exciting game. < present participle
• Interested parties should apply to the office. < past participle

The indicated participles and phrase behave attributively, but I consider it taxonomically misleading to refer to them as "verbs" in the context discussed here. Whereas referring to them instead as attributive participles and an attributive to-infinitive phrases (as well as attributive gerunds) seem linguistically well-founded, the notion of an attributive verb doesn't pass linguistic muster, IMHO. Kent Dominic 10:59, 4 April 2019 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Kent Dominic (talk • contribs)

There is a slight whiff of 'original research' about this article. However, one of the three quoted sources, Chamberlain's Handbook of Colloquial Japanese, does draw a clear connection between English and Japanese:

The Japanese language has neither relative pronouns nor relative words of any sort. Their absence is generally made good by the use of a construction in which the verb is prefixed to the noun attributively, just as an adjective might be.... As shown in the foregoing examples, the English relative and verb are represented in Japanese by a verb alone, which is used participially, or, as it is more usual to say in Japanese grammar, attributively, prefixed to the noun. In English this construction is allowable only in the case of participles, as " the shipwrecked sailors," "the shrieking women and children."

Chamberlain is explicitly comparing "Attributive verbs" to "Attributive adjectives" (that is, adjectives in attributive position). He is thus drawing a distinction between "Attributive verbs" and "Predicative verbs". Predicative verbs, like predicative adjectives, involve the use of verbs in predication. Attributive verbs, like attributive adjectives, involve the verb in directly modifying the noun.

In FORMAL terms, the "Attributive verb 'form'" is more commonly known in linguistics as the "participle", which David Crystal defines as "a word derived from a verb and used as an adjective, as in a laughing face". In many of the so-called 'Altaic' languages across Eurasia that use attributive verb constructions -- Mongolian, Turkish, Finnish, etc. -- there is a very clear formal distinction between predicate verb forms (used to end sentences) and participles (used to modify nouns). However, while verbs modifying nouns are known in Japanese as 連体形 rentaikei, meaning "the attributive form", modern Japanese only vestigially preserves any formal distinction between attributive and predicative verb forms. So calling this article "Attributive verb 'form'" would ironically probably exclude Japanese (as well as Chinese, which does not have participles) from the article. The "Altaic-type" languages, on the other hand, could all be used to furnish good examples of "attributive verb forms".

I have no knowledge of the Bantu languages and how they fit into this. At "The typology of relative clause formation in African languages" (Studies in African Linguistic Typology), Comrie treats Swahili, for one, as having a "gap strategy" (like Japanese), but no source for Bantu is listed at this article; it is possibly from the personal knowledge of the original author of the page.

By the by, Chamberlain also put forward the idea that the interpretation of 'relative clauses' (i.e., Attributive verbs) in Japanese is heavily reliant on context and semantics. This was an idea heavily pushed by Yoshiko Matsumoto's work on Japanese relative clauses in the 1990s, which in turn led Bernard Comrie to adopt the term "General Noun-Modifying Clause Constructions" to describe the type of attributive verb construction found across Eurasia and East Asia, including Japanese, Chinese, and so-called "Altaic" languages like Mongolian, Turkish, and Finnish. Comrie included complement clauses ("the fact that we couldn't get there") in this construction on the grounds that there is no formal distinction in these languages from "the fact that he presented".

66.181.191.230 (talk) 15:12, 26 January 2021 (UTC)