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:
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>>So what does the "ethical" mean here?
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>Apparently, that's a hard question.
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>Here's the ask-a-linguist discussion of it:
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>http://www.linguistlist.org/~ask-ling/archive-1998.4/msg00149.html
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>where Larry Trask makes a tentative suggestion.
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>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"

To me above dative  and the one in the Spanish  "El nene no me come la
comida" is more than parenthical. It conveys the idea of 'you do it for
me as a favour even if you are not keen on doing it for your own sake'

David Barrow

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