Re: THEORY: Valency-Reducing Operations on High-Valency Predicates

On 5/20/06, Eldin Raigmore <eldin_raigmore@...> wrote:
> Most languages do have ditransitive verbs; and in most of them these verbs
> form a minority, significantly smaller than the classes of monotransitive
> and intransitive verbs.
>
> But some languages do not have any ditransitive verbs; and, even those that
> do, might lack a ditransitive that some other language has.
>
> So there are some languages where even "give" clauses and/or "show" clauses
> will have to be glossed as two monotransitive clauses, or at least as two
> bivalent clauses; just as above.
>
> --
> Questions
> Does anyone else know of any such natlangs?
> Does anyone know of any conlangs like that?
I think I saw something similar involving a "serial verb"
construction, where "Jack gave Jill the bike" got rendered as
something like "Jack took bike gave-to Jill", where there are two
verbs, neither of which takes more than two arguments.

I don't remember whether it was a natlang (if so, it was probably
Chinese) or a conlang (if so, then it was possibly Kamakawi), however.

Cheers,
--
Philip Newton <philip.newton@...>