Re: Question about transitivity/intransitivity

Quoting Andreas Johansson <andjo@...>:

> Quoting Rob Haden <magwich78@...>:
>
> > Thanks for your reply, Mathias.  The sentences you list above are
> > examples of what I would call "English preposition-omitting ambiguity."
> > Prepositions indicating oblique relationships are often omitted in
> > casual speech in English, giving rise to sentences like "I give John the
> > dog." While such sentences can be sorted out by fluent English-
> > speakers via context, they may be difficult for others to sort through.
>
> Sure this has anything to do with dropped prepositions? "I give
> John the dog" looks EXTREMELY much like the dative constructions
> found in other Germanic languages.
Depends on your theory of morphosyntax.  Mark Baker's theory of
incorporation holds that N's are not the only lexical heads
that may incorporate into verbs.  Prepositions and various kinds
of null categories may also incorporate, deriving applicative,
causative, antipassive, passive, and generally any valence
changing construction.   In the case of the dative-shift
construction that you mention, Baker claims that there is a
null preposition that governs the NP "John" at D-structure,
which incorporates into the verb, forcing "John" to raise to
get abstract case.  (Baker really likes these null categories;
I myself am rather allergic to them, but that's his argument.)
In support of this argument, Baker provides evidence from some
Inuit language (West Greenlandic, IIRC) which only allows this
kind of dative shift construction when an overt morpheme is
present to show the argument structure has changed.  I don't
think he would agree that the preposition is "dropped", however;
it's just never pronounced at all.

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Thomas Wier            "I find it useful to meet my subjects personally,
Dept. of Linguistics    because our secret police don't get it right
University of Chicago   half the time." -- octogenarian Sheikh Zayed of
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Chicago, IL 60637

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