'Essential' - reply to jimc

[CJ FINE <cbmvax!uunet!pucc.princeton.edu!91909372>]

I don't tink there is such a thing as an essential place - or if there
is, it only makes sense in a very narrow interpretation (cf 'Core
Grammatical Relations' as in Relational Grammar).  As you say lojbab
argues, the places are a matter of negotiation between speakers. You can
argue 'it would be more (often) useful to have this positional argument
than that one', but I don't believe that a simple binary
'essential/non-essential' is the slightest bit useful.

                                Kolen Fain
c.j.fine@bradford.ac.uk