Re: a grammar sketch...

On Sat, 30 Sep 2000, =?iso-8859-1?Q?J=F6rg?= Rhiemeier wrote:

> Yoon Ha Lee wrote:
> >
> > On Sat, 30 Sep 2000, =?iso-8859-1?Q?J=F6rg?= Rhiemeier wrote:
> >
> > I'm a little lost.  What does "head marking" mean?  Is that the same as
> > when languages put adjectives after the noun, etc.?  Or have I gotten
> > the terminology reversed?
>
> Head marking has nothing to do with word order, it means that the
> semantic
> relations between verbs and nouns are not marked on the noun by cases,
> but by agreement on the verb.  However, I do not understand head marking
> deeply enough to explain properly.  Marcus, please?
<puzzled look>  If people are too busy, I'll look it up.  I'm intrigued
but still confused.

> > > > Something like "I gave her flowers" would render casewise:
> > > > I: actor
> > > > her: actee (the intent of the action is to make "her" a gift-recipient)
> > > > flowers: accomplice (the flowers were complicitous in the giving-act)
> > > > giving: action
> > >
> > > Traditionally, "here" is in dative case and "flowers" in accusative, or
> > > as
> > > we are talking active langs here, objective case.
> > >
> > > In Nur-ellen, the sentence is
> > >
> > > Im      annent    na  he          ljös.
> > > AGT.1SG give-PAST DAT AGT.3SG.FEM OBJ.flower.PL
> >
> > I thought of that, except (as H.S. Teoh has done, rather more coherently)
> > "accusative" and "dative" seem somehow wrong, because the *point* of the
> > action is for "her" to have the flower, not for the flower to belong to
> > "her," so "her" is in some sense the recipient of the action.  :-/  I
> > *know* I'm saying this poorly.
>
> I wasn't intending to say that your "actee" was a dative and the
> "accomplice" an accusative or objective.  It is rather that your cases
> cannot be comfortably matched onto such traditional terms.
Oh, I see what you meant!  Sorry for misunderstanding you.

YHL