Re: USAGE: objects of either directivity

-- "Mark J. Reed" <markjreed@...> wrote:
> In English, there are several verbs, mostly of telling, which
> can take an indirect and a direct object, as in "Tell me a story."
> However, when the verb has only a direct object, that object can
> fill either role:  "Tell me."  "Tell the story."  It's like a bridi
> with three sumti where the third is optional, but where there's
> possibly
> an implied "se te" before the brivla.
>
> How common is this sort of thing in other languages?  Is
> it mostly an Indo-European phenomenon, or nearly universal, or
> otherwise unheard-of?
i think there was something about this in the linguistics yahoo group a while
ago... mostly about the fact that some dialects of english don't allow an
indirect object without a direct object... people who speak those dialects
would presumably say "tell to me."

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and girls just lie."
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narav teraz' iroti
kojes krat erarota
kuna, ysivaz' entas
naradas krat zuny narav
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dimokrosi zosa endas
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