Re: THEORY: more questions
| From: | Paul Bennett <paul-bennett@...> |
|---|
| Date: | Tuesday, November 25, 2003, 20:49 |
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On Tue, 25 Nov 2003 20:01:17 +0000, Tim May
<butsuri@...> wrote:
> Paul Bennett wrote at 2003-11-25 14:47:14 (-0500)
> > On Tue, 25 Nov 2003 19:49:02 +0100, Andreas Johansson <andjo@...>
> > wrote:
> >
> > > That seems to leave English's indirect objects rather hanging in the
> > > blue?*
> >
> > I don't understand. I can't think of a single indirect object in
> English
> > that isn't marked by a preposition, except for possibly ill-formed
> > utterances like
> >
> > ?give it me
> >
> > for
> >
> > give it to me
> >
> > I don't know. I don't claim for one minute to be an expert in English
> > syntax. Maybe I'm merely failing to understand some aspect of your
> > statement that is at a more abstract technical level than I'm used to
> > encountering.
>
> "Give me the book". Or rather, "he gave me the book", as it's
> probably best to use a declarative example.
>
Hmm.
Which is more grammatical:
?he gave me
or
?he gave the book
Maybe grammatical is the wrong word. Maybe "understandable" is a better
word, or, maybe, "unambiguous"?
It's my understanding that the recipient/benefactive noun takes the Oblique
case in (almost?) all cases like this, leading me to wonder whether "the
book" is a greater candidate for direct-object-hood than "me".
Paul
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