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Re: arguments

From:Chris Bates <chris.maths_student@...>
Date:Wednesday, March 23, 2005, 19:21
Basque also will fill empty agreement slots with agreement with the
gender of the second person when you're using the familiar hika forms.
For example, if you were adressing someone with the formal "zu" you'd say:

euria egiten du
rain-art make-prog 3rd.abs-3rd.erg
"it's making rain"
It's raining

But if you were addressing someone using the informal "hi" it's
obligatory if you can to insert a reference to the speaker, so instead
you'd say:

euria egiten dik/din
rain-art make-prog 3rd.abs-2nd.masc/fem-3rd.erg
"it's making rain to you (masc/fem)"
It's raining

This is similar to the dative of interest in Romance languages except
that its use is obligatory with the 2nd person familiar except when all
three verbal agreement slots are already occupied.
 Anyway, my point was that Basque also forces verbal agreement with the
gender of familiar addressees.

> Basque does it > thus in "izozki bat ekarri dizut" I have brought you an ice-cream the > auxilliary verb can be analized as such > di- : agreement with the absolutive (singular) > zu- agreement with the dative > -t agreement with the ergative.