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Re: Ditransitivity (again!)

From:Roger Mills <romilly@...>
Date:Sunday, January 25, 2004, 5:45
David Barrow wrote:

> These verbs can all take two word orders > > buy me some milk > buy some milk for me >
But note the preposition "for". That makes it a benefactive, IMO. I'm trying to restrict dative to those cases where the structure can change from "verb X Y" to "verb Y to X". It may be unnecessarily restrictive, but I don't think so. I used to kid my mother when she said "Put me in a piece of toast"..........And there's the old wheeze, A: "Call me a cab!" B: "OK, you're a cab!" (Groucho, I think, but it's way older than that)
> What about those verbs that can only take one word order > > explain this passage to me > not > explain me this passage
Well, as Mark Reed just posted, it's acceptable to him. To me, it's marginal. OTOH "he told me a story" is fine but -->?"He told a story to me" seems awkward, though of course it's perfectly correct.
> > others include > say, mention, introduce > > Are they considered ditransitive? Or do they come under some other
category?
>
Optional ditrans. in my view. And they require a to-phrase. *He said me that.... *He mentioned me Mary *He introduced me John. vs. "he said to me that..., he mentioned Mary to me.... He introduced John to me. And they're all good without the to-phrase, though with different meaning. Note that "he said that..., he mentioned Mary...., he introduced John..." are all perfectly good. ("Introduce" caused me real headaches in Kash, since it's a causative form.) There seem also to be some animacy concerns lurking here; it's difficult to conceive e.g. of "giving" something to an inanimate*. Cf. J.Quijada's "he applied solvent to the stain" (though personally I'd call that a locative, not a dative). But give it an animate object, and it's still "The doctor applied salve to John" not *The dr. applied John salve". ObConlang! I think "...applied salve to John" would be ungrammatical in Kash-- they would have to specify something like "...to John's wound/chest" etc. and it would definitely be a locative phrase. Amusingly, OTOH, "he went to his father for money" _would_ use the dative in Kash, because the locative prep. _ri_ can't take a bare human object... (except in the genitive, ri mami, ri ereki -- where it means 'at my place/house, at Erek's place/house' rather like French "chez moi, chez Christophe" :-)) ) ---------------------------------------------- *But we do have "he gave the car/stone a push/kick". But depending on the object noun, "He gave a .... to the car/stone" starts to sound odd. Exceptions everywhere, alas. In Kash, inanimates hardly ever occur in the dative case.