Verber, verbed grammar (VVG) shows that rules of language are easier to state, understand, apply, and retain using verber and verbed than subject and direct object. See TFSLL.
Subject, direct object (DO), and indirect object (IO) are not optimal tools to learn a language. The VVG series gives second language (L2) learners the verber entailment and the verbed entailment, the tools that native speakers use to learn their language. If this explanation surprises you, this explanation is the surpriser (the verber entailment), and you are the surprised (the verbed entailment). Explanations surprise people; people do not surprise explanations. No speaker of any language will say that people surprise this explanation. That is The Fundamentally Simple Logic of Language.
If there is a verber in a sentence, it is always the subject. When there is no verber in a sentence, the verbed or the verbee is promoted to subject. This latter rule explains passive voice (the VVG series was created in 2023) and intransitivizations with a reflexive pronoun (Spanish la puerta se abrió ‘the door (was) opened’ and Italian Rosa si è tagliata un dito ‘Rose has cut her finger’). A reflexive pronoun in a sentence indicates that the verber (not the DO or the IO) has been omitted. That explains why Italian requires the auxiliary essere ‘be’ in reflexive sentences. The auxiliary is avere ‘have’ when there is a verber in the sentence (Rosa ha lavorato ‘Rose has worked’; Rosa ha tagliato la carne. ‘Rose has cut the beef’). The auxiliary is essere ‘be’ when there is no verber in the sentence (Il libro è arrivato ‘the book has arrived’). See UTRSS.
With VVG, argument structure (how speakers determine subject, DO, and IO) does not have to explain IOs. The meaning of an IO is computed the same way any other prepositional phrase is computed: by computing the meaning of the preposition and the meaning of the noun phrase (NP or DP), as Davis (2001: 119) suggested. I baked a cake FOR YOU, the cake was IN THE OVEN, the cake is ON THE TABLE, etc. See TFSLL.
VVG makes understandable to teachers and college students many concepts that have been understood until now only by linguists. L2 learners of any language now have many of the tools that linguists have for learning another language.
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