Re: Verbs of Transfer and Exchange in Cherani Trade Speech

Christophe Grandsire scripsit:

> Interesting. In a way, it looks quite natural if you put the emphasis of the
> trade on the people who trade. But I don't know if any language (except those,
> like English, which allow constructions like "Tlefrin gave Netannin the fish")
> does that, i.e. putting the receiver as direct object of the the object
> received as oblique.
I don't think that analysis is valid.  Your sentence is in every way
equivalent to "Tlefrin gave the fish to Netannin"; in either case,
"Netannin" is the IO.  It's just conventional that the IO can appear
unmarked before the DO (and such sentences are much more perspicuous
if the IO is "light", a name or pronoun).

What *is* weird about English is its ability to promote the IO as well as
the DO to subject by passivization:  "The fish was given to Tlefrin by
Netannin".  BrE can omit the "to" here, but AmE can't.

I think it's interesting that the Mandarin verb qu4 = "go to" treats
the destination as DO:  "wo qu Beijing" = I go Beijing.  AFAIK no IE
language can do that.  Li & Thompson say this form is a borrowing from
Southern Sinitic.

--
John Cowan           http://www.ccil.org/~cowan              cowan@ccil.org
To say that Bilbo's breath was taken away is no description at all.  There
are no words left to express his staggerment, since Men changed the language
that they learned of elves in the days when all the world was wonderful.
        --_The Hobbit_

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