Re: USAGE: Re : Re: USAGE: Teaching Children

>Dans un courrier daté du 28/04/00 15:48:16  , vous avez écrit :
>
>> Dan Morrison wrote:
>>      -How would your languages say something like "she teaches languages to
>> children"? Most of mine would probably use a double accusative, or maybe
>put "
>> children" in the dative and "languages" in the accusative. This would then
>> mean that "she teaches children" would also use the dative for "children".
In Tokana, this problem is solved for me by virtue of the fact that
the word for "teach" is derived from the word for "give"--"maiuthma"
("uthma" = give, "mai-" = pertaining to intellectual activities).  So the
case roles of the different noun phrases are based on those for "give",
absolutive for the thing being taught, and dative for the person being
taught:

   Na  maiuthma  sul  latei
   she.Nom  teach  language.Abs  children.Dat
   "She teaches languages to children"
   "She teaches children languages"

To say "She teaches children", merely add the 'antipassive' prefix to
the verb.  I put 'antipassive' in scare quotes because the function of
this morpheme is not to rearrange the grammatical functions of the
sentence, but merely to 'surpress' the absolutive object:

   Na  umaiuthma  latei
   she.Nom  APass-teach  children.Dat
   "She teaches (things) to children"
   "She teaches children"

Another way to say this would be to use the noun "kahuna" = teacher.
"Ne kahuna lati" = "She (is) a teacher (of) children".

Matt.