Cases/Adpositions

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Terra
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Cases/Adpositions

Post by Terra »

Given the following sentences:
1) I struck the man.
2) I yelled "Watch out!" to the man.

Is there any language where "the man" takes the same case/adposition in both sentences?

Also, given the following sentences:
3) I named the dog "Spot".
4) I told the man "No thank you.".
5) I called the man a wanker.

How would you gloss these sentences? How are these sentences usually/traditionally parsed into parts-of-speech? I want to call the first object after the verb the indirect object, but none of them can be extracted into a prep phrase, which is somewhat strange.

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Re: Cases/Adpositions

Post by Yng »

Well, definitely to the former - there are plenty of languages with identical case marking for direct and indirect objects. It would surprise me if there wasn't a language where 'yell' took two objects. The semantically similar 'tell' works like this in English.

As for the second set - I think the normal interpretation would be, for 3 and 5, verbs with an object and a complement (the quality the verb ascribes to its DO). 4 is slightly different - I'd say "I told you so" is just a substantivesque second direct object.
كان يا ما كان / يا صمت العشية / قمري هاجر في الصبح بعيدا / في العيون العسلية

tà yi póbo tsùtsùr ciivà dè!

short texts in Cuhbi

Risha Cuhbi grammar

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Terra
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Re: Cases/Adpositions

Post by Terra »

Well, definitely to the former - there are plenty of languages with identical case marking for direct and indirect objects.
But is there a language that classifies "the man" in both sentences as one type of object, and "Watch out!" as another?

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Re: Cases/Adpositions

Post by zompist »

To borrow some examples I used in another thread... Latin treats some of these as double accusatives-- mē augurem nōmināvērunt "they named me augur", elementa eōs docēbat "he taught them the basics". This of course in a language that has a healthy dative case.

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Re: Cases/Adpositions

Post by Melteor »

I told the man to watch out.
I gave the man a warning.

Dialectically I have
I gave him a no-thank-you.

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Re: Cases/Adpositions

Post by Drydic »

Manmelt wrote:I told the man to watch out.
I gave the man a warning.
Those are not the same sentences.
Dialectically I have
I gave him a no-thank-you.
You apparently have no idea what dialectally means.
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Re: Cases/Adpositions

Post by Miekko »

Terra,
go read on "dechticaetiativity"

As for 3) and 5), the standard analysis used in grammar in high school for me would have those consist of a direct object and an object complement ('objektpredikatsfyllnad/objektspredikativ' in Swedish).

That is, the role of 'John' in "we call him John" is similar to "red" in 'the house is red', but it pertains to the object instead of to the subject. (I hope you already know why 'red' is not an object in 'the house is red', or at least a very unusual object if it is one.)
Last edited by Miekko on Thu Sep 05, 2013 5:04 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Cases/Adpositions

Post by Ulrike Meinhof »

Miekko wrote:Terra,
go read on "dechticaetiativity"
This is a curious suggestion, actually. I once tried to do just that a while back when the phenomenon sparked my interest, but apart from a Wikipedia article and a handful of mentions in forums and the like, I haven't seen this term in use anywhere. Grammars and other academic literature usually talk about "primary and secondary objects", or use some other more ad hoc terminology. I've certainly never heard of a language with a "dechticaetiative case". From what I recall, how the thing functions in languages like Yoruba (IIRC?) is quite different from just throwing it into a normal IE language with a case system like Latin's; it touches on other parts of the grammar that seem more alien to an SAE speaker (I think it's usually discussed when dealing with applicative constructions, I'm sorry I can't remember the details).
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Re: Cases/Adpositions

Post by Drydic »

That's because linguists realized it was a dumbfuck term to use and started calling it secundative.
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Re: Cases/Adpositions

Post by Terra »

That's because linguists realized it was a dumbfuck term to use and started calling it secundative.
Thank you for the terminology hints.

The wiki page provides this revealing example:

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The project provides young people with work.
This kind of construction works with some verbs:

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The project provides work to young people.
The project provides young people work.
The project provides young people with work.

The government supplies weapons to the rebels.
The government supplies the rebels weapons.
The government supplies the rebels with weapons.
In the examples with "with", is the object still an indirect object?

It doesn't work with others:

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The man feeds apples to the horses.
The man feeds the horses apples.
?The man feeds the horses with apples.

The department gives free food to the students.
The department gives the students free food.
*The department gives the students with free food.
This reminds me of sentences like:

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The mother gives her children plenty of affection.
The mother raises her children with plenty of affection.
But who would argue that "children" in the second sentence is an indirect object? It looks really tempting when you compare it with the provide/supply examples. I suppose that a traditionalist would describe the prep phrase as adverbial though.

Anyways, this dative-shift+with seems to work with only some verbs:

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provide
supply
furnish
equip
arm
fit
outfit
bestow
As for 3) and 5), the standard analysis used in grammar in high school for me would have those consist of a direct object and an object complement ('objektpredikatsfyllnad/objektspredikativ' in Swedish).
Okay. And 4) would be an indirect object?

I guess this makes me ask what exactly is meant by the term "indirect object". Is it purely syntactic? Or is it shorthand for "a free object (that is, one not in a prep phrase), which (usually) marks the recipient"?

It's strange that the first argument of "tell" can't be un-dative-shifted. And yet, other verbs can't be dative-shifted at all!:

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I spoke to him about the problem.
*I spoke him about the problem.
In a way, "tell" and "say" form a suppletive paradigm, where "say" takes one argument, and "tell" two:

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Just say that you're too busy.
?Just say to him that you're too busy.
*Just say that you're too busy to him.
*Just say him that you're too busy.
(But: Just say "no" to drugs.)

*Just tell that you're too busy.
Just tell him that you're too busy.
"wear"/"clothe with" and "eat"/"feed" supplete in the same way.

This all gets even more confusing when I start thinking about light verb constructions like:

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Give the sled a push!
Give the lever a pull!
A final question: Do other IE languages have verbs constructions similar to English's "provide/supply with" ones?

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Re: Cases/Adpositions

Post by Ser »

I'm pretty sure there's tons of verbs like those in English and Spanish...

Aliméntalo con comida especial.
/aliˈment-a=lo kon koˈmida espeˈθjal/
to.fill-2S.IMP=it with food[F].SG special.SG
Feed it special food.

Llénenlo de pintura roja.
/ˈʎen-en=lo de pinˈtuɾa ˈrox-a/
to.fill-2P.IMP=it of paint[F].SG red-F.SG
Fill it with red paint.

Cúbralo de pintura roja.
/ˈkubɾ-a=lo de pinˈtuɾa ˈrox-a/
to.cover-2S.IMP=it of paint[F].SG red-F.SG
Cover it with red paint.

It's probably quite questionable whether the thing to be covered in red paint in the last two examples is really a recipient, but I think "to fill" and "to cover" have enough "motion towards sth" for that?

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Re: Cases/Adpositions

Post by zompist »

Terra wrote:This reminds me of sentences like:

Code: Select all

The mother gives her children plenty of affection.
The mother raises her children with plenty of affection.
But who would argue that "children" in the second sentence is an indirect object? It looks really tempting when you compare it with the provide/supply examples. I suppose that a traditionalist would describe the prep phrase as adverbial though.
This bit makes me wonder what you mean by "indirect object". There are at least three levels that you might be talking about.

1. Surface structure (which is largely where I'd expect to use the term).
2. Deep structure, or whatever the kids are calling it these days-- theta roles in G&B for instance.
3. Semantic level.

If you're bringing up a couple sentences where the semantic relationship is the same, then you're at the semantic level, and you can call the children here 'beneficiaries' or 'recipients' or something... not 'indirect objects'.

What you call things at levels 1 or 2 depends on your syntactic theory of choice... in my experience "indirect object" is mostly used as a convenient informal term... I see that Comrie has a passage arguing that there is no such thing. Anyway, if you have a more formal idea of what an indirect object is, it would be helpful to explain what you mean.

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Re: Cases/Adpositions

Post by Terra »

zompist wrote:
Terra wrote:This reminds me of sentences like:

Code: Select all

The mother gives her children plenty of affection.
The mother raises her children with plenty of affection.
But who would argue that "children" in the second sentence is an indirect object? It looks really tempting when you compare it with the provide/supply examples. I suppose that a traditionalist would describe the prep phrase as adverbial though.
This bit makes me wonder what you mean by "indirect object". There are at least three levels that you might be talking about.

1. Surface structure (which is largely where I'd expect to use the term).
2. Deep structure, or whatever the kids are calling it these days-- theta roles in G&B for instance.
3. Semantic level.

If you're bringing up a couple sentences where the semantic relationship is the same, then you're at the semantic level, and you can call the children here 'beneficiaries' or 'recipients' or something... not 'indirect objects'.

What you call things at levels 1 or 2 depends on your syntactic theory of choice... in my experience "indirect object" is mostly used as a convenient informal term... I see that Comrie has a passage arguing that there is no such thing. Anyway, if you have a more formal idea of what an indirect object is, it would be helpful to explain what you mean.
By "indirect object", I mean a combination of syntax and semantics: an object (a noun that's not a subject and not in a prep phrase) that has recipient meaning.

I think I'll stop using it from now on. I'd rather have separate terms for syntax (object versus prep phrase) and semantics (agent, patient, etc).
3) I named the dog "Spot".
4) I told the man "No thank you.".
5) I called the man a wanker.
What is "No thank you." in 4) if not a complement? How does one check for a complement? Is it that one can say "The dog is Spot." and "The man is a wanker.", but not "The man is no thank you."?

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