Re: a grammar sketch...

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