Re: USAGE: Teaching Children

On Thu, 27 Apr 2000 20:34:54 +0100, yl-ruil <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".
Jarrda also uses the dative for "children" in the first sentence.

siv v'ra tal weodna [siv vr\a tal w7dna]
siv   veo-ra  tal-     0   weod- na
teach she-ERG language-ABS child-DAT
"she teaches languages to children"

But the Jarrda translation of the second sentence adds a suffix to the verb
to put it in what I misleadingly and inaccurately call the "passive" voice.
(I still haven't come up with a better name for it.)

sifkhi v'ra weod [sifxi vr\a w7t]
siv-  khi  veo-ra  weod- 0
teach-PASS she-ERG child-ABS
"she teaches children"

--
languages of Azir------> ----<http://www.io.com/~hmiller/languages.html>---
Thryomanes/Herman Miller  "If all Printers were determin'd not to print any
    h i l r i . o        thing till they were sure it would offend no body,
     m l e @ o c m       there would be very little printed." -Ben Franklin