Re: USAGE: Teaching Children

> >I've just come across a knotty problem. How would your languages say
something like "she teaches languages to children"? Most of mine would
probably use a double accusative, or maybe put "children" in the dative and
"languages" in the accusative. This would then mean that "she teaches
children" would also use the dative for "children".

It's hazy memory day here in Kou-land. While, gasp, I didn't have a word for
"teach" prior to this thread (how is this possible?), there have been other
verbs, which I can't seem to recall just now, where this situation has
occurred, and Géarthnuns has had no compunction about knocking what was an
accusative in one sentence into dative position in another. So:

San la chöik sékletsöich zhnígal.
she-nom pres the-pl child-acc/pl teach
She teaches children.

and then:

San la chauk mölkarharsauch chöik sékletsöil zhnígal.
she-nom pres the-pl language-acc/pl the-pl child-dat/pl teach
She teaches languages to children.

It remains to be seen whether "zhnígal" will remain in this class of verbs,
but it would be a natural extension.

Kou