Re: THEORY: more questions

Nik Taylor wrote:

> Costentin Cornomorus wrote:
> > I'm not sure what's wrong with "give it me".
>
> That gives me the strange notion of someone giving me to some inanimate
> object, or maybe feeding me to some monster.  :-)
>
Right, that would be the correct reading if a heavy stress were on _me_ --
"Give it _me_!"  as opposed to "Don't give it that sweet little baby!"--
speaker is being nobly self-sacrificial and altruistic.  :-)))  In that case
it's a normal (ha!) V IO  DO sentence, but as I said in my other post,
nowadays we don't give, buy/sell human beings under normal circumstances.

If the heavy stress is on _give_, it seems to be a strong demand, spoken in
the heat of the moment, and would mean "give it to me NOW [or I'll whup you
upside the head]".  IMNSHO, the deletion of the "to" can't be explained
otherwise.  It's a question of what we cán say, not what we shóuld say,
Chomskian performance vs. competence.  Note that in this case, if we
subtitute any other pronoun or a noun-- "gíve it them", "gíve it John" (=
give it to them/John NOW!) it becomes much less acceptable.

To this day I remember-- from age 11 or 12-- how a playmate cried out "Here
comes she!" as he spotted my sister approaching us at an inopportune
moment...........(This same playmate also confused "witch" with "which"--
both had "wh-"-- to my great amusement.  Even at that age I was on my way to
language maven-hood.:-)))  )

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