Re: Ethical Dative, was Re: Polysynthetic Languages

----- Original Message -----
From: "David Barrow" <davidab@...>
To: <CONLANG@...>
Sent: Monday, September 29, 2003 4:30 AM
Subject: Re: Ethical Dative, was Re: Polysynthetic Languages


> Doug Dee wrote:
>
> >In a message dated 9/28/2003 7:48:47 PM Eastern Daylight Time,
cinga@GMX.NET
> >writes:
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >>So what does the "ethical" mean here?
> >>
> >>
> >
> >
> >
> >Apparently, that's a hard question.
> >
> >Here's the ask-a-linguist discussion of it:
> >
> >http://www.linguistlist.org/~ask-ling/archive-1998.4/msg00149.html
> >
> >where Larry Trask makes a tentative suggestion.
> >
> >Doug
> >
>
> Fowler's Modern English Usage says it means emotional or expressive and
> is a way a speaker introduces himself into an action of which he has no
> more than indirect interest. Fowler equates it to a parenthetical 'I
> wonder' and was once present in English:
>
> "He that kills me some six or seven dozens of Scots before breakfast"
Ooh! Ooh! Henry IV Pt I.  Act 2 Scene 4, I think.