Re: USAGE: Teaching Children

> yl-ruil wrote:
>
> 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".
The way that ea-luna handles this is that the direct object of
"teach" is always the subject being taught ("languages") and the
receiver of the teaching is the indirect object ("children").

adi   ki  luna        (e-)  gege.
teach she language(s) (Io*) young (ones).

Notes: e- is an optional indirect object marker, almost never
used. There is a DO marker too, but it is used so rarely, I don't
remember what it is. (LOL) I used "gege" for "children" because
it means something similar and I didn't have to search my
handwritten lexicon for it. I used a sex-specific pronoun too. I
almost never do that. But you can see how the sentence is put
together, and that is what is important.

Completely off this topic, looking at it now, I am thinking that
"gege" would be a better word for "baby or infant" than "tinu",
which is the word right now. Hmmmmm.

--

Mia Soderquist
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