Theiling Online    Sitemap    Conlang Mailing List HQ   

Re: Ditransitivity

From:Isidora Zamora <isidora@...>
Date:Saturday, December 13, 2003, 2:56
At 09:17 PM 12/12/03 -0500, you wrote:
>For my all-verb language, I'm trying to figure out what to do with >ditransitives like "give". Basically, I see two options: either do >away with ditransitives, or add verbal indirect-object marking and a >dative case. > >Does anyone know if there is a way to get rid of ditransitives? Id you >don't want to have indirect objects, how can you deal with concepts >like "give"?
Can you get rid of ditransitives by replacing the dative case with an adverb? I mean, instead of having a dative case and marking the IO of the verb with the dative case, make the IO of the verb an adverb. e.g. He gave the book John-ly = He gave the book to John. I realize that this means turning a noun or pronoun into an adverb, which is not a normal thing to do, in my own experience. (And, of course, I have no idea how my suggestion would work out at all in any language, much less in an all-verb language. (In general, I have great difficulty conceptualizing languages in which a major part of speech does not exist.)) FWIW Isidora

Reply

Andreas Johansson <andjo@...>