Re: Question about transitivity/intransitivity

----- Original Message -----
From: "Garth Wallace" <gwalla@...>
To: <CONLANG@...>
Sent: Monday, June 16, 2003 5:10 AM
Subject: Re: Question about transitivity/intransitivity


> Stone Gordonssen wrote:
> >> I'd consider "I give the dog to John" to be an example of a transitive
> >> verb with an oblique recipient, while "I give John the dog" is an
> >> example of a ditransitive. But I'm hardly an expert here...
> >
> >
> > Will you elaborate on this? It is an issue with which I am struggling in
my
> > new conlang.
>
> I'm just saying that "I gave the dog to John" is basically the same
> sentence as "I gave the dog"...the recipient is optionally supplied by
> means of an oblique (a prepositional phrase). In "I gave John the dog",
> on the other hand, no arguments are oblique, so in this case "gave" is
> ditransitive. It's sort of like the difference between "The door opens"
> and "He opens the door", except in regards to the indirect object. Not
> sure if that made it any clearer...
>
No, 'John' is oblique.  The fact that it's not marked does not make it any
less so.  It's oblicity(??) is shown by word-order, I think.