2009/12/16 Michael Turner <[log in to unmask]>:
> Linas wrote:
>> I don't know WG, but its fairly widely understood in one way or
>> another that copular verbs don't have "senses" or "meanings",
>> even though they do have a wide range of auxilliary functions.
>
> You mean this is the virtual consensus in linguistics?

No, only that its a not-uncommon viewpoint. Certainly common
enough to get a wikipedia article devoted to it.

>for a rose to smell sweet, somebody has to smell it.

Heh. Many linguists would deny this, as its an "unobservable act"
and say instead that what you must deal with is the ordered collection
of words before you (and more generally, other large collections of
words you may have handy)

>  Tom seemed suspicious

"Tom posseses the property of seeming-suspicious"

> Tom did things that made me think he was suspicious.

I certainly never met Tom, or saw any things that he did. I'm just
parsing the sentence "Tom seemed suspicious".  We could be talking
about colorless green ideas that seemed suspicious, for all
it matters.

Anyway, I'm not sure where this conversation is going ... I was trying
to be helpful.

--linas