"I'm gonna buy me a dog"

Larry Gorbet lgorbet at unm.edu
Fri Sep 24 23:03:11 UTC 2004


Jo Rubba wrote

>People on our grammar-teaching list have been discussing indirect
>objects. Examples from various English dialects came up, such as
>"I'm gonna run me the best race of my life" or "I'm gonna bake me a
>cake". Are these being analyzed as middle-voice (or similar)
>constructions?

By some people. I was about to jump in running on the basis of your
second example, but the first one stopped me in my tracks. They are
really different in some ways. And, no, I don't really know how.

But consider what (for me) are some contrasts.

The first contrasts with

2b. I'm gonna bake myself a cake.

2c. I'm gonna bake a cake. [no beneficiary specified or even necessary]

But the first feels really odd to me (at least this afternoon) with "myself".

1b. ? I'm gonna run myself the best race of my life.

1c.  I'm gonna run the best race of my life. [like 2c, no beneficiary]

I'm all open to the possibility that the difference between 1b. and
2b. is just a consequence of the semantics of the construction plus
that of the respective original sentences. But it's tricky stuff.

The "1a" sentence (Jo's original second) seems to objectivize the
speaker/beneficiary (?) by using the form that would be used if the
subject were not coreferential. Hmm. Is the oddity for me of 1b.
related to the oddity of "Sheila's gonna run me the best race of her
life"? That is, the "source" construction (X do V Y..., where X and Y
are plain nominals without prepositions) for it doesn't work.

Parenthetically, Sherman's examples are all of these
non-coreferential types and so, while perhaps related to Jo's, are
not at all exemplars of the same construction(s).

Whee.

- Larry



More information about the Funknet mailing list