Johnson 2004 - CDLI - UCLA

construction in a nearly unique context in spite of the fact that igi-√du 8 occurs quite
frequently in the text-artifactual record.
The inability of BNBV inal predicates to form the *XP nam bi-√ construction more
readily seems, therefore, to follow from the highly thetic character of verbs of perception
and experience and the transfer of possession model that underlies these constructions in
Sumerian. This line of argument also allows for a harmonization of the general findings
of Sumerologists who have investigated the matter (particularly Karahashi’s discussion of
non-referentiality and the set of devices that introduce referential specificity (Karahashi
2000, 42-45) and a number of different research traditions in formal semantics that draw
a distinction between events or portions thereof (stage-level / thetic / “Restrict”) and
individuals (individual-level / categorical / “Specify”). 37
37 The named contrasts are, for our purposes, best associated with Carlson 1977, Basilico 2003, and Chung and
Ladusaw 2004, respectively.
313