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

From:Sylvia Sotomayor <sylvia1@...>
Date:Friday, April 28, 2000, 17:10
At 11:45 04/28/2000 -0500, you wrote:
> >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".
Kélen is fairly similar. .The relational 'se' covers all two-object situations, so: se-mish ne tashóñ mo ne elíñ ho ja mattúthon se-3p to 3p languages to children by means of being a teacher 'se' still operates even when one object is suppressed: se-mish mo ne elíñ ho ja mattúthon se-3p to 3p to children by means of being a teacher "She teaches [null] to children." or "She teaches children." se-mish ne tashóñ ho ja mattúthon se-3p to 3p languages by means of being a teacher "She teaches languages [to 3p]" She is a teacher of children would use the relational 'pa' pa ma ja mattúthon ne elíñ pa 3p a-sg. teacher pl. children 'mo' is a case marker for goal or dative and 'ho' is a case marker for instrument. Sylvia -- Sylvia Sotomayor sylvia1@ix.netcom.com Kélen can be found at http://users.lmi.net/sylvia/Kelen/kelen.html "In the beginning was the word. But by the time the second word was added to it, there was trouble. For with it came syntax..." John Simon, Paradigms Lost