Re: HELP--Quick Transitivity Questions

Roger Mills <romilly@...> wrote:
>>>
This also ties in with Elliot Lash's interesting post about the Dative
Transformation......
Indonesian can do it too, though it's one of the foggier areas in my
competence.  Something like (very much open to correction):
Active 2:  Ali memberikan Siti buku 'Ali gave Siti a book'
Passive 2: Siti diberikan buku oleh Ali 'Siti was given a book by Ali'
( another foggy area-- I'm not sure if ...diberikan oleh Ali buku is OK; I
don't think so-- the above is what came out naturally.)
The main foggy area is that I'm not entirely sure but that _-kan_ should be
in the -1- sentences and not in the -2-s.  _-kan_ is supposed to focus on
the "object"-- but which object when there are two of them????)
<<<
i'm pretty sure your examples are perfect. in this case "-kan" means "untuk" and
focuses on Siti as the beneficiary. When it's not a beneficiary but rather a
location or a person on whom something is applied "-i" is used instead of "-kan"
like in "menanami/"ditanami" "to plante/be planted (in/with)" or
"mengobati/diobati" "to give/be given medicine". the difference is mainly that
"-kan" implies that Siti knows what to do with a book and kind of interact with
Ali, while the doctor's patient is not really proactive when getting the
medicine. my only two eurocents to your examples are that i would try to
separate "Siti" from "buku" with a classifier: "Ali memberikan Siti
sehelai/sebuah buku." but that's not mandatory and i'm sure you would do that
too :-) IMHO it's still fairly logical and dead easy. less easy are other
specific uses of "-kan": "membangun gedung" "to build a building" vs.
"membangunkan siapa" "to wake up someone". although that's pretty logical if you
think of "bangun" as meaning "to erect/get up", "gedung" (building) as a
resulting Focus contrasting to "siapa" (someone) as a dynamic Patient: the
dynamic Patient gets up and you prompt his waking up while the building can't
really be prompted to build itself although english and japanese mediopassive
verbs "to build (up)" would testify to the contrary :-)

>>>
KASH has no passive, but you can front (focus) either the dative IO or the
accusative DO; the correct _translation_ would probably be a passive.
<<<
ok, so your "Focus" would be a "Topic" to me and Christophe. actually Christophe
may correct me that it's a "Theme" as opposed to the "Rheme" and i should agree.
"Topic" would rather refer to a specific semantic role. Although a few posts
above David Bell calls "Theme" what looks like such a "Topic". so i may be
wrong. erm. help! Tunu does the same as Kaç but with an indonesian "di-"-like
"mock passive prefix" showing the subject is really a Topic. no: a Focus. i
mean: a Theme. oy.
Mathias
www.geocities.com/kalatunu/index.htm