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Re: Question about transitivity/intransitivity

From:Andreas Johansson <andjo@...>
Date:Saturday, June 14, 2003, 12:48
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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Thomas R. Wier <trwier@...>