Tritransitivity?

[zompist]

Yeepers, those are confusing. ná'oolkiłí, that posting would make a great article for the Yonagu collection I am planning, if supplemented by some explanations...

[ná'oolkiłí]

I could take a stab at it, but I'm only beginning to wrap my head around it myself. What specifically would you want more information about—is it the glosses that are confusing or the system in general? Also, I'm fairly familiar with the South Caucasian verb system— would that interest you too?

[Kai_DaiGoji]

How's this for an English example: I gave Mary herpes.

Disclaimer: I did not give Mary herpes.

[TomHChappell]

I now have the resources to at least attempt answering these questions. All examples are Kabardian, from The Indigenous Languages of the Caucasus, Vol 2: NWC, ed. George Hewitt (the chapter on Kabardian is by John Colarusso); Colarusso's Kabardian; and Matasović's A Short Grammar of East Circassian (Kabardian).

(And other great stuff.)

Oh, wow! Thanks!
Especially for Matasović's A Short Grammar of East Circassian (Kabardian)

How's this for an English example: I gave Mary herpes.
Disclaimer: I did not give Mary herpes.

No, that's only ditransitive and only trivalent. Subject "I", Direct Object "herpes", Indirect Obj "Mary".

[Kai_DaiGoji]

Ah, I counted wrong. x-transitivity vs x-valency.

[TomHChappell]

I sell seashells.
I sold the house.
I bet.
I bet that you won't accept that, though.
I bet on Secretariat.

Are you looking for verbs in a language other than English? Valency refers to required arguments -- otherwise "go" could be, let's see -- I went looking for a job from Chicago to Bangor by car with my friend while listening to rock music...

Hey, can anyone list what verbs are tetravalent? I'm looking for something related to a conlang I'm doing, but it seems more fitting to put this in L&L because of the nature of the question. Right now, I have bet and sell, but I'm having trouble finding more.

Search for "tetravalent" here on this ZBBoard.

See this thread: http://zbb.spinnwebe.com/viewtopic.php? ... etravalent.

There's no need to make a new thread on "tetravalent".

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Search for "tritransitive".

See this article: http://wwwstaff.eva.mpg.de/~cschmidt/SW ... ttilae.pdf
or here http://www.accessmylibrary.com/article- ... types.html.
Or see it here: http://www.reference-global.com/doi/abs ... G.2007.015.
Or here: http://cat.inist.fr/?aModele=afficheN&cpsidt=18782222.

http://www.learnarabiconline.com/verbal-sentences.shtml has a tritransitive example in Arabic.
http://www.jstor.org/pss/1263529 discusses two types of tritransitive verbs in Sierra Popoluca.

I don't know what UNL is, but they mention tritransitivity in http://www.unlweb.net/forum/viewtopic.php?p=382.

I hope some of that helps.

Also: goshnarbit I thought we as a society had agreed to put the Latinate prefixes before -valent and the Graecian prefixes before -transitive. The word ought to be "quadrivalent".

Your post is the only one on the board with "quadrivalent" in it.

But several off-ZBB hits come up.
For instance
http://meaningtext.net/mtt2007/proceedi ... sFinal.pdf
(also http://www.dinaelkassas.com/fichiers/EL ... ersion.pdf)

http://www.eva.mpg.de/lingua/valency/pd ... khvakh.pdf
http://archives.conlang.info/fo/pirgo/bifhuengal.html
http://screcherche.univ-lyon3.fr/lexis/ ... article111
http://www.springerlink.com/content/a627p4178n435561/
http://www.persee.fr/web/revues/home/pr ... _17_1_1260