Re: THEORY: Alignment of ditransitive with monotransitive case roles.

--- In conlang@yahoogroups.com, Carsten Becker <naranoieati@B...>
wrote:

> This answer is not very helpful I guess. For what it's
> worth ... hey, I'm proud to maybe have understood something
> that first looked puzzling to me as an linguistically
> untrained (read: not so savvy) person.
On the contrary! Thank you for your helpful answer!

> If I understood you right, English, just like French and my
> own conlang Ayeri are Accusative Secondary.
Right.

> I noticed,
> though, that German is the 'oddball' here and is Accusative
> Indirect.
Actually I don't think that makes German the oddball.  I think
classical grammarians all figured every language should be like
Latin, which is Accusative Indirect.  German is, Modern English
isn't, as I understand it.

> Yes, we've got Dative Movement, though of course
> the obligatory "to R" ("an R") is not wrong, but just not
> preferred. R *must* be in dative case, while D=S=A and T=P:
>
>    Jemand gibt jemandem etwas
>     Nom          Dat     Acc
>     S=A    V     R=R     T=P
Very helpful example; couldn't be clearer.

> And yes, your thoughts are interesting,
Wow, even my Mom never says such nice things to me!

> though I only
> understood it with some scribblings of how Accusative and
> how Ergative langs group cases and how they do the
> described things (3->2-transtive, antipassivisation).
>
> Furthermore, in German, in some monotransitive sentences,
> the DO must usually take accusative but others need to be
> in dative case: Experiencers are usually in dative (only
> experiencers in intransitive sentences?!) and some
> prepositions trigger dative as well, others trigger
> accusative case.
One of the reasons I asked some of the questions in my first post
was, that I think some familiar European languages have examples of
most patterns in the matchup between ditransitive arguments with
monotransitive arguments, at least as survivals or relicts.  These
would show up as certain monotransitive clauses requiring dative
direct objects with nominative subjects, or dative subjects with
accusative direct objects.

The Experiencer/Stimulus monotransitive clause is different from the
Agent/Patient monotransitive clause.  To me, Experiencers feel more
like Recipients; they must be animate, but they are the ones that
get changed.  The Stimulus is unchanged by being observed or sensed,
and need not be animate.  So it seems reasonable to me that in
Experiencer/Stimulus monotransitive clauses the Experiencer should
be in the same case as the Recipient or Benificiary or Maleficiary
of a ditransitive clause.

Most "Standard Average European" languages show only the Accusative
pattern for the matchup of monotransitive with intransitive
arguments.  But every pattern -- accusative, ergative, split-
ergative, active (split-intransitive), "fluid-S", etc. -- along that
dimension; has a parallel in the matchup of ditransitive roles with
monotransitive roles.  I guessed and hoped that all these patterns
of ditransitive-to-monotransitive-alignment were attested in "S.A.E"
languages; and German and Latin were two languages I kind of hoped
might help prove my guess true:  but I don't know Latin at all, and
don't know German well enough to judge on my own.

Again, Thank you.

-----

Tom H.C. in OK

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