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Re: THEORY: more questions

From:Roger Mills <romilly@...>
Date:Wednesday, November 26, 2003, 16:39
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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Nik Taylor <yonjuuni@...>