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Re: a grammar sketch...

From:Yoon Ha Lee <yl112@...>
Date:Saturday, September 30, 2000, 4:20
On Fri, 29 Sep 2000, Marcus Smith wrote:

> Yoon Ha Lee wrote: > > > > 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:
<blink> Huh. I hadn't realized that...but then, my formal English grammar is pretty lousy.
> 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)
Oh, I see it! Except...<puzzled look again> I could've *sworn* I'd seen constructions like "The ring was given her" somewhere. Maybe Andre Norton or some other sf/f writer, because it sounds vaguely archaic to my admittedly untrained ear.
> 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.)
Oddness. <fascinated look>
> 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.
[snip]
> 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.
Gosh. <thinking> I get it. Thanks! Now, if only my intuition in *mathematics* were even a quarter as reliable.... YHL, enlightened