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The participant role for the ball is marked with a dashed box. This indicates that this
role does not always need to be expressed at the sentence level. There may even be a
preference for not expressing the
MOVANT
. It is understood that there is a
MOVANT
,
an object
moving, even if there is no syntactic expression of this role.
Tirar
can also refer to shooting a weapon or firearm.
(CdE:19-F, Pancha)
(111) T
IRA
, miserable. Tal vez sea el único servicio que deba agradecerte en mi vida…
‘S
HOOT
, you scoundrel. That might be the only thing
in my life that I could be
grateful to you for.’
(CdE:19-F, US:Herald:98May20)
(112) “No
TIREN
, no
TIREN
, que se mató Don Alfredo”, rogó uno de los caseros…
‘“Don’t
SHOOT
, don’t
SHOOT
, Don Alfredo killed himself”, begged one of the
landlords’
In these examples, the only element expressed is the
INITIATOR
. Recall that the verbal
morphology is enough to indicate this. There is no mention of a
MOVANT
.
Arguably the
element that is understood as moving is the bullet or projectile. There is also no
DIRECTIONAL
. This use of the verb means ‘to shoot with a firearm’ (ADESSE) and
semantically and syntactically only one participant is mentioned.
There is a third meaning for
tirar
that also occurs without a
MOVANT
.
(CdE:19-F, Palabras en juego)
(113) Ni siquiera alcancé a ser mediocre. Creo que más bien
TIRABA
a malo
.
Not even reach to be mediocre. Think that more good threw to bad
‘I couldn’t even reach mediocre. I think, instead, I was closer to bad.’
Tirar
here means ‘to be close to having a certain attribute’ (ADESSE). The example
means that the individual was almost bad but not quite. There is a metaphor here involving an
INITIATOR
who
moves in a certain direction; in this case moving
a malo
‘to bad/nasty’.
Attributes are locations that one can move to. There are only two example of this schema in
the data. ADESSE also only attested two examples in their corpus. This seems to indicate that
it is not a common use.
The last four examples of sentences lacking a
MOVANT
are cases where the
MOVANT
is
understood and normally mentioned in the preceding or following context. The following two
examples serve to illustrate.
(CdE:19-F, San Antonio Gris Cadáver)
(114)
Germán le compró a Luis tres dardos, pero Luis no quería jugar. Linda le dijo que
TIRARA
…
‘German bought Luis three darts, but Luis didn’t want to play. Linda told him to
SHOOT
.’