Re: Ergative
| From: | Nik Taylor <fortytwo@...> |
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| Date: | Thursday, October 22, 1998, 2:55 |
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R. Skrintha wrote:
> Since the verbs for which the experiencer dative is available in each lang
> appear to coincide (eg., know/need/like), I suppose that one of the langs
> (or their parent-langs) might have borrowed it fromm the other. I believe
> it could have been either way.
Or, quite possibly, simply a result of drift. Those are verbs which you
would expect to be dative-experiencer, if there are any
dative-experiencers. Perhaps the parent lang had a small number of
experiencer-dative verbs. Those could have generalized, and in doing
so, even if there were absolutely no contact between the langs, they
would tend to generalize to the same verbs.
--
"It's bad manners to talk about ropes in the house of a man whose father
was hanged." - Irish proverb
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