Re: THEORY: USAGE/THEORY: Re: Case

And Rosta wrote:

>> >Sanskrit uses the instrumental for "through" in the spatial sense,
>BTW, so that seems in order.
>
>The book made out of Bill Croft's PhD (I forget its title) has a nice
>cognitive
>explanation for why this makes sense. Basically force travels a linear
>path from one participant to another, billiardswise, and since
>instruments
>are intermediate on that path they would be expected to occur in the
>same case that expresses the locative notion of being intermediate
>along a path.
That's sort of what I had in mind when I decided to use the instrumental
case to express motion through in Tokana.  The instrumental can also be
used for the 'causee' in a causative construction, especially if that
'causee' is not behaving volitionally in carrying out the wishes of
the 'causer'.  So in a sentence like "Bill forced David to dig the ditch",
"David" would most likely be in the instrumental.  This also fits in
with the notion that instrumental = intermediate/mediating participant
in the vector of force between agent and patient.

The instrumental case is also used for the object of verbs like "speak"
and "understand", when that object denotes the language or system of
communication used.  So in "I speak Tokana", "Tokana" is in the instrumental
case.

Matt.

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Matt Pearson
mpearson@ucla.edu
UCLA Linguistics Department
405 Hilgard Avenue
Los Angeles, CA 90095-1543
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