Re: a grammar sketch...

Yoon Ha Lee wrote:

> > 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.
If I understand you right, your intuition is good on this point.  Many
languages do treat the "dative" object as if it is the recipient of the
action -- even English when you know where to look.  Where in
English?  Passives.  Compare:

John saw the flowers.
The flowers were seen (by John).

John gave Sally flowers.
Sally was given flowers (by John).
**Flowers were given Sally (by John).  (BAD English)

John gave flowers to Sally.
*Sally was given flowers to.  (BAD English)
Flowers were given to Sally.

In the first set, "flowers" is the recipient of the action (in your terms),
and it can passivize.  In the second set, "Sally" is the recipient and can
passivize; but "flowers" is not so cannot passivize.  In the third set, by
putting "Sally" in a preposition, you have put "flowers" back into the
recipient role; thus, "flowers" can passivize, but "(to) Sally"
cannot.  (There might be some dialectal variation on some of those.  German
and Farsi do not work like this.)

If that doesn't convince you, maybe what active languages do will.  These
are examples from my Telek, but *all* (no exceptions) of the relevant
natlangs I've looked at do the same.

la'ni-id na-so-lesa-'ni.
apple-ACC1sA-AsP-see-PERF
'I saw an apple.'

la'ni-id n-as-kene-'ni.
apple-ACC 1sA-ApP-give-PERF
'I gave them apples.'

In the first sentence, the object agreement on the verb agrees with "apple"
(glossed as AsP - animate singular patient).  In the second example, the
verb agrees with "them" (glossed as ApP - animate plural patient) instead
of apples.  All the generalizations about active languages tell us that the
"patient" or "undergoer" is the one that gets the "object"
marking.  Conclusion: "them" (the indirect object) is the undergoer.

See, pretty much what your intuitions tell you.


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Marcus Smith
AIM:  Anaakoot
"When you lose a language, it's like
dropping a bomb on a museum."
   -- Kenneth Hale
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