Theiling Online    Sitemap    Conlang Mailing List HQ   

Re: THEORY: more questions

From:Tim May <butsuri@...>
Date:Tuesday, November 25, 2003, 20:01
Paul Bennett wrote at 2003-11-25 14:47:14 (-0500)
 > On Tue, 25 Nov 2003 19:49:02 +0100, Andreas Johansson <andjo@...>
 > wrote:
 >
 > > Quoting Paul Bennett <paul-bennett@...>:
 > >
 > >> > b.. oblique (as an aspect or mood or so)
 > >>
 > >> From Larry Trask's excellent Dictionary Of Grammatical Terms In
 > >> Linguistics
 > >> (ISBN 0415086280):
 > >>
 > >> Denoting an argument [noun] which is neither a subject nor a direct
 > >> object.
 > >> Oblique [noun]s in English are realized as objects of prepositions; in
 > >> some
 > >> other languages, they may be objects of postpositions or case-marked
 > >> [noun]s.
 > >
 > > 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.

Reply

Paul Bennett <paul-bennett@...>