05-10-2018, 07:20 PM
To me Nick's sentence makes no grammatical sense. He says:
It seems that the whole line was therefore originally a complete Occitan sentence starting with "meilhor aller lutz (kou)..." meaning mystifyingly something like "to run light better"...
Now aller is an intransitive verb, which means that it cannot take an object. The subject does the action, but not to something else.
The subject should go before the verb, not behind it. but this is further complicated by the fact that "aller" is an infinitive form. Perhaps it could be taken as an imperative, in which case no subject is required. But even then, it cannot be followed directly by a noun in the nominative case.
You could say "better go" or "better go quickly" or "better go to the doctor", but not "better go apples".
In short, interpreting the sentence as better + to go + light is grammatically problematic.
It seems that the whole line was therefore originally a complete Occitan sentence starting with "meilhor aller lutz (kou)..." meaning mystifyingly something like "to run light better"...
Now aller is an intransitive verb, which means that it cannot take an object. The subject does the action, but not to something else.
The subject should go before the verb, not behind it. but this is further complicated by the fact that "aller" is an infinitive form. Perhaps it could be taken as an imperative, in which case no subject is required. But even then, it cannot be followed directly by a noun in the nominative case.
You could say "better go" or "better go quickly" or "better go to the doctor", but not "better go apples".
In short, interpreting the sentence as better + to go + light is grammatically problematic.