Re: Question about transitivity/intransitivity

Quoting "Thomas R. Wier" <trwier@...>:

> 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.
Either I'm misunderstanding you, or this is a complex way of saying that
English has a null realization of the Germanic dative marker.

This is assuming that there's no deep difference between a null case ending
and a null preposition, and that dropping a null element isn't any different
from keeping it in.

But I was thinking diachronically; I'd be very surprised to learn that
constructions like _I give John the dog_ are reformed from things like _I give
the dog to John_ rather than cognate to things like _Ich gebe ihm den Hund_.

                                                          Andreas

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