- THE MYTH OF EXIST AS AN INTRANSITIVE VERB - THE NOMINATIVELY INDUCED GENERATION OF A NEUROLOGICALLY AVAILABLE, COVERT, CORE-PREDICATION - JUD EVANS

1. The number of arguments that a verb takes is called its valency. (power) Verbs can be classified according to their valency according to the number of noun phrases with which a verb can combine in English sentences. Verb valence theory describes a sentence's semantic structure. According to this theory, a verb has a certain valence, or power to attract a certain number of *adjuncts.* So the term *valency* indicates the possession of some form of controlling dispositional influence over the amount of satellite sentential noun phrases, for some purpose, not just simply acting as some form of abstractive count noun in a role that could easily be performed by various conjugations of the verb *to count* or *to total?*

Although the so-called "verb" exist/exists gives an outward appearance of intransitivity in the sense that it appears to have no need of an overt object or predicate, it does not need one because – it ALREADY HAS ONE. "Exist" is only syntactically intransitive and not in fact conceptually intransitive. Neurologically all nouns contain their own latent transitivity together with a covert, core-predicate which lies neurologically available in memory encapsulated or gift-wrapped in the name of every familiar sentential subject. [1] (see below for exceptions.)

English verbs are often flexible with regard to valency. A transitive verb can often dispose of its object and turn intransitive; or an intransitive verb can be provided with an object and change to transitive.

Compare:
(d) "I turned." (intransitive)
(e) "I turned on the tap." (transitive)
In the first example, the verb "turned" appears to have no grammatical object, but there is a covert-object and a covert core-predicate understood - the subject "I" + "myself" "I turned myself."

The verb in (d) might possibly be described as "objectively reflexive," rather than intransitive. In the second (e) the subject and object – though mapping to the same physical soma are both distinct.

Thus the standard human reaction in all instances of recognised nouns (see note: [1] in sentences of the type: "John exists." the subject word "John" is immediately understood as the identicative relational object of the subject John himself. initiates the instant search for tan existentially verificatory sententially covert, descriptive core-predicate which (with certain exceptions [see below] conceptually and contextually instantiates, maps and conceptually expands a meaningful "gift-wrapped" exemplification of "John as my son," as "John next door," or as "John my daughter’s husband," etc.

I am of course not inferring that the rules of English Grammar are in some transcendentalist way intrinsically encapsulated and magically inherent in the verbs themselves – rather than being situated in the human *referee grammarian community.*

My answer as an eliminativist to anyone who claims that it is THE VERBS THEMSELVES that exert anything other than a humanly guaranteed meta-grammatical power (rather than the language-using, communicatively powerful humans) in order to morphologically or syntactically shift position and acquire more arguments, is like saying that it is the football player who determines with what, or with whom, he can be associated, and that he can swop-over at will in mid game and act as the goalie for the opposing team rather than abide by the rules of football as laid down by the human beings who decide these rules as members of The Football Association.

The actual local and individuate power involved in the acceptance or non-acceptance of grammatical rules and the acquiescence or otherwise of the expansion of sentential arguments or otherwise is the linguistically endowed speaker of English and the standard of his education, or the dialect-speakers of English which like those who speak African American English may have modified some rules which in certain sentential non-copuletic forms (and other vernacular speech) drop the verb *is* altogether. (copula depletion.)
Mt I believe, there must remain a residually acknowledged but unspoken copula in order for the valency expansion to occur. But that would form the subject for another discussion.

It is no avail simply to enumerate the number of allowed arguments in certain sentences - there is nothing new in that, and most educated people are already aware of that stuff anyway. Such observations consist of no more than enumerating the RESULTS of the NUMBER of instances of combinatorial possibilities permitted or empowered by the acquiescent human grammatical moderatorium of valency rules operating in a certain language community which affect the predicate involved.

Consideration regarding the constrictive powers or permissions of valency investment (the valency ability of the verbs involved to combine semantically or syntactically with other sentential elements which allow or determine, is in human hands, (brains) though it is a convention of linguists to address such things as if the grammatical processes or the elements of speech were is some way self-controlling and this paper is an examination the human neurological mechanisms both overt and covert which ultimately control, empower, or restrict those resultant numerical instances of sentential argument association.

One does not need to be a Sherlock Holmes to work out that the reason that Katsnelson reached for his book of chemistry and selected and introduced the word *valency* into linguistics with the former discipline's preoccupation with the associative effects of chemical mixtures and the physical rules or laws which determine the intermixtural chemical blending of 1. or with 2 or with 3 substances to realise that the paradigm could easily be adapted to predicate analysis and the amount of verb associations expressed in valences of… 1 or 2 or 3...etc.

My researches and analysis of *IS* show that the orphanic copular is NEVER EVER involved in mapping to entitic (property-vacuous) entities. In my view it is humanly impossible ( psychologically infeasible) to neurologically map to a existential nullity. In other words humans would never attribute names to entities (either assumed to be factual or known to be fictional) that are property-bereft (so-called pure entities) , otherwise they would be unmappable and meaningless. The mention of ANY NOUN automatically initialises a neurological search for an appropriate hit. Such a referential retrieval process throws up associated semantic associations - whichever associate data presents first is a property-based allusion to the subject noun involved which stimulated such a neurologically reticulate cross-reference and can be described as privately covert, opinionative predication. If no such connection was made the attributant's eyes would glaze over in incomprehension in the manner of George Bush.

Ontological Analysis

To characterise it as a form of *free-association* misses the point. Firstly, such initial core-predication does not involve enough time for considered choice - the core-predicate result is instantiated instantly and reflexively. When I mention the word MOTHER to you - an instantly generated private predicate is instantiated in you brain. What that memorised instantiation comprises of - whether it is in the form a short or more lengthy ideation, and whether in another situation such a predication might be more complex - is a private predicative information regarding you and your dear mother to which nobody else has access.

Judgmental decisions as to whether associations such as *Obama--President* are true or false is not something that anyone other than the addressee can be *compelled to accept* unless possibly they:

The first stage of reuniting of the name of something with its cached *first-response predicative constituent* into a *ab initio cognitively examinable subject-predicative model* then continues to the second stage of considering the truth of falsity of propositions related to the instantiated concept.

The second-stage evaluation process of comparing the addressee's onto-predicative claim comes next. In other words, the first cognitive stage is to splice the stimulative subject and proto-predicate to act as an examinable model of ontological sentential enquiry appropriate for comparison with any second-stage implied ontological claims made by the addressor in the form of the statement or proposition.

It is only during the process of comparing the results of one's antecedent (covert or private) predication, which contains previously arrived at opinion on matters ontological, with that of the addressor that propositions are accepted as being true, rejected as being false or book-marked pending further predication.

Thus for example if the stimulant word was: *Pig* and the core predicate was: *four legged, dirty snuffling animal* and the comparison stage revealed that the ontological claim was:

the claim would be rejected as false or perhaps slotted into another pending category such as:

(1) Joke? (2) Addressor/Addressee ill? (3) Mechanical Wings? (4) Did I hear correctly? etc.

In this instance, according to what the average intelligent reader will know apodictically what I mean when I say that nouns are self-instantiating. The neurological process of nominal instantiation occurs when the ideative instantiating agent (the addressee) responding to the incoming data communicated audibly or visually by the addressor in the form of the verbalised sentential subject term (the noun) automatically initiates a Seek and Find command in the addressee's linguistically active neurological network.

For the eliminativist (and possible other non-dualists of a different persuasion) there is no artificial Cartesian-like dichotomy betwixt the somatic holism and the ideating brain. Thus there is no difference in saying that it is the human agent, or the phoneme unscrambling, data-stimulated, search co-coordinating, causative brain, which, after being aroused by the incoming data, hot-wires the attestative core-predicate search for available, matching, core-predicates and coordinates the conceptual instantiation in the form of a ready-made and stored core-predicate.

In effect the brain's electro-chemical search-engine draws on a cache of available basic identicative description sufficient for the perceptive act of identifying the semantic import or meaning of the noun and its ramifications vis a vis the addressee and the environment and its content.

Monitorial Conflicts

The encephalonic presence and neuronal ubiety of a parallel, neuro-ontological surveillance operation also explains the continuous conflicts which arise following the use of obfuscative forms of abstraction or reification. Conflict occurs when vague universalisms beloved of religion and continental philosophy clash with the identicative-results of the neuro-matching system which fails to map to the specific subject-predicate couplings with clear semantic specificities judged conformable with the brain’s environmentally interconnectionist, ontologically based target strategies.

The empirical fact that there is a practical, instinctive reaction to linguistico-ontological aberrancy such as in instances of instantiating ostensibly unpredicated (unpropertied) entities of by way of the so-called: *is of existence* and similar semantic language misapplication indicates a perpetual conflict between the crudity of overt ontological remissness and the basically survivalist-guided covertly monitorial *causal agencies of intervention.*

My researches and analysis of the copuletic "is" and the intransitive verb "exist" show that the orphanic copular "is" of: ("God is.") or objectless or predicateless "exist" of: "Numbers exist." is NEVER EVER involved in neurologically mapping to an entitic (property-vacuous) pure or propertyless entity, in spite of the utterer’s naive belief that such is the case. In my view it is humanly impossible (psychologically and ontologically infeasible) to neurologically map to an existential propertyless nullity – whether it be a spirituous nihility or otherwise. Some form predicative description is ALWAYS encapsulated in the subject name either as a proper name or in the form of a prenominal adjective and name: "Black swans exist" which is informed by the content of covert, mentalised, predicative implicature. In other words humans would/could never attribute meaningful names to entities either factual of fictional that are property-bereft, otherwise they would have no meaning, direction or identicative purpose and would never be uttered.

But do all mathematicians agree that numbers exist? No doubt the more damaged transcendentally subjectivised victims of childhood imprinting cannot think straight - but I have met many mathematicians who have freed themselves from the Platonised strictures of childhood indoctrination. Mathematicians apart, there are many members of society who realise that numbers do not exist in some fantasised overhead templatal realm from which they helpfully float down as arithmetical aerofoils when they feel the call to help humans calculate the length of a piece of string or the numbers of condoms to distribute at the entrance door to a monastery bathhouse.

Numbers are but mental constructs and as such are symbolic signs mathematicians manipulate within an historically developed, mutually agreed system as useful numerical fictions vital in order to impose mensural order within a closed abstractive system which has emerged in order that we may measure, count, multiply, subtract and divide and categorially coordinate the world in which we find ourselves.

That is what the discussion concerns - not whether statements related to an enclosed system of numerical constructs comply with mutually agreed internal rules of maths OR THAT THEY ARE TRUE with regards to the agreed rules of that system regarding the manipulation of those arithmetical constructs. The brain re-jigs ontological unspecificates like*numbers exist* into forms like *Numbers exist as mathematical constructs of the human brain.* For the ontological/philosophical cognoscenti this (or a form of this - for all of our deep structure predication is individually different) becomes the default internalised subject-predicate norm.

The de facto result of Core-Predication is much more profound than linguistic tinkering with sentential forms in order to improve the communicative capability of valency by the insertion of poetical metaphor (like *the sleep of death, etc) as an aid to colloquy.

The axiom of core-predication uncovers and introduces into the psycho-grammatical domain the presence of a completely new, specific, parallel, (covert but empirically accessible and verifiable) private grammar which acts as a serious challenge to traditional linguistic-philosophy. I have not expanded or created the meta-grammatical valency of *exists* - the verb *exist* has ALWAYS been in a condition of parallel valency - from the very first time that primitive man cognised of the subject and descriptor as an essential precondition of meaningful communication. It is more correct to say that core-predication hasbeen meta-grammatically revealed and explained as a ubiquitous hidden linguistic mechanism of human neurology.

Like most a posteriori discoveries it proves to be a process so simple, so apodeictic of the common individual experience, so obvious to all humans whatever language they happen to speak. It is amazing that this neuro-implicative challenge to the globally attested and accepted paradigms of the SVO, OVS, SOV, OSV, VSO, VOS languages has not been made before. The empirical clincher of course is the obvious fact that if no transformative, preprocessed core-predication was available in a person's brain for nomimal-descriptor sentential combination, their responses in dialogue of any kind (other than perhaps instinctually-generated interjections (ouw! ugh, uh, er, um, etc.) to perceived phenomena) would be so ponderously slow, clumsy and inarticulate that the victim would no doubt be diagnosed as mentally backward at an early age. As far as I can see at this stage the core-predicate rule is completely unaffected by syntactical variation. Even in cases of syntactic and locative inversion in languages like German, which for non native speakers colludes confusingly with topic and question formation.