tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Wed Sep 21 09:24:21 1994
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Re: KLBC: jItagh
According to [email protected]:
>
>
> charghwI'vo':
>
> >Unfortunately, in that example, the verb "call" has two equal
> >objects. The technical term for that is "apposition". The two
> >nouns, "wind" and "Mariah" are in fact different words for the
> >same thing.
>
> This is not apposition. Apposition is when two nouns fill a single verb
> role, as in: "I saw my brother, the doctor." In this case, the verb has only
> one object role, and it is filled by both "my brother" and "the doctor."
> "My brother, the doctor, came home." Etc.
I appreciate this guidance, but I am still a little vague on
this. I would appreciate a little further comment.
> With the verb {pong}, similar to the English verb "give," there are two
> separate object roles assigned by the verb. "I gave my brother the car."
Unfortunately, here "brother" is clearly the indirect object
and "car" is the direct object. I see that they are different.
I can easily rephrase this, "I gave the car to my brother." In
"They call the wind Mariah," I don't think that "wind" is an
indirect object. I can't say, "They call Mariah to the wind,"
and wind up with a clear sentence. It kind of means the same
thing by one interpretation, but in a sense, it could as much
have a parallel meaning as, "They call Maria to the telephone,"
as in, "The airport just paged Mariah."
My main point is that, whether or not this is apposition, it
certainly is DIFFERENT. There is something peculiar to this
verb, making it awkward to use with the grammer we are
currently given. The verb has two objects and neither one seems
particularly indirect. "I give the car," and "I give to my
brother," make more sense in terms of giving than, "They call
the wind," or "They call Mariah," in the sense of naming the
thing.
> This is *not* apposition; there are two different roles assigned to objects
> by the verb.
Great. WHAT roles?
> I could add another noun phrase, and produce an apposition
> construction here: "I gave my brother, the doctor, the car." Notice that
> with apposition, the two noun phrases have to refer to the same thing; with
> double object verbs, they don't. It'd be pretty weird to say: "I saw my
> brother, the car."
Double object verbs. New term. More examples?
> With "call," it's harder to see, because both noun phrases appear to have the
> same reference; but they're different. One identifies the object, and the
> other identifies the name of the object. "They call the wind Mariah." [I
> love Kay and the Kees!] You could stick in a noun phrase in apposition with
> "the wind," such as "the breeze from the north": "They call the wind, the
> breeze from the north, Mariah." See?
Or, I suppose, "They call the wind Mariah, the breeze from the
north." Kinda twists yer brain a little.
> Just a little point of linguistic terminology there, charghwI'. {{:)
>
> --Holtej
>
Great. Now I know what it is not. So what you say it is is a
Double object verb. Now, I could use a tutorial on double
object verbs. I think we skirt around it here, but it could use
a more direct approach.
charghwI'