Re: Objective

On 29 Oct 2003 at 13:21, Akhilesh Pillalamarri wrote:

>
> Can someone tell me the difference between the direct and indirect
> objectives and its relation to importance in a conlang?
>
There are basically three types of object, which I shall notate O, DO
and IO, and they occur as follows:

Simple transitive sentence.
I-Nom see the dog-Acc.
Subj Verb O

Sentence with two objects.
I-Nom throw the ball-Acc to the man-Dat
Subj Verb DO to IO

In most languages, the DO (and the O) are obligatory in a sentence,
i.e. you can say:

I-Nom throw the ball-Acc

but not

* I-Nom throw to the man-Dat

OTOH, cases exist where it might be usually marked "the other way
around"...

I-Nom see the dog-Dir
Subj Verb O

I-Nom throw the man-Dir (with) the ball-Ins
Subj Verb IO (with) DO

... thus marking O and IO the same and DO differently. Indeed in some
languages the marking on O and IO is zero, whereas DO is compulsorily
marked.

In languages like this, you cán say

I-Nom throw to the man-Dir

but nòt

* I-Nom throw the ball-Ins

Languages like this are called Dechticaetiative /dektI'si:ti@tIv/ and
languages which do it the "normal" way which are called Dative.

In Dative languages, O and DO are both normally called Direct
Objects, and IO is called the Indirect Object.

In Dechticaetiative languages, O and IO are both normally called
Primary Objects and DO is called the Secondary Object.

There. Confused now? Good. Think of dechticaetiative as being the
ergative of objects, that might help.

I'm desperately scurrying through my reference material to try and
find a real-world example of all these concepts, but apparently
suitable examples are a bit thin on the ground.

Okay. Minor epiphany. Here's the short version.

In most languages:

In sentences with a subject and an object, the object is direct.

In sentences with a subject and several objects, the direct one is
the one that the sentence cannot be grammatical without. Usually, the
direct object is also the one with little or no special marking.

And, please forget I said anything about dechticaetiative languages.
It's a bugger to spell.




Paul