Re: Newbie here

>>PS I've got a little question too. In a sentence like "They call me Bob",
>>"they" obviously is the subject and "call" the verb. But what are "me" and
>>"Bob"?
>
>In traditonal terms, "me" is the object, and "Bob" is the predicative
>complement of the object.  This definition seems especially proper for
>Latin and Greek at least, where the predicative complement of the object
>appears in the accusative case.
>
>Some of the modern analyses would tell much the same thing with different
>words, i.e. they would take "call Bob" to be a complex (that is compound)
>predicate.  Which leads the way to one obvious question:  do any of you
>know of a natlang where the translational equivalent of "call Bob" would
>be a single compound verb?  And what about conlangs?
>
>In Heichi, where composition is a normal and productive process,
>composition is the most likely choice:  for example, the translation of
>"They made me king" would look like "They king-made me."
>
>Happy langdeving,
>
>Tommaso.
I was, as you may've gathered, asking since I'm trying to decide how to
express it in my conlang. So, from what you say it seems most logical to put
"me" in the accusative and leave "Bob" in the nominative (Tairezazh have the
predicate of sentences like "I'm an engineer" in the nominative). So,
substituting "Bob" for a Tairezazh name, I'd have _Senen sreiz Telko tas_
"They call me Telko", where _tas_ is accusative "me" and _senen_ "they" and
_Telko_ (a masculine name meaning something like "short one") are
nominatives.

                                                   Andreas
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