German MIT - once again

[ludwig.paul at UNI-HAMBURG.DE]

Dear colleagues,

I followed with great interest the discussion about German "mit" around mid-
December, but when Wolfgang sent around his 2nd summary, I was on my way to 
vacations, and was without access to the discussions/summaries (but with time to 
think) for two weeks.

Upon re-reading the summaries now, I wonder why this interesting discussion has 
not been continued further - maybe because of the Christmas season? I wonder 
especially why the discussion has been held mainly with data from European 
languages only (that are, as it has been stated, suspicious of having influenced each 
other on this point, especially in the Bible translations), and why it has not been 
enriched with data from typologically diverse languages.

The languages for which I have native speakers at hand, Persian, Turkish and 
Arabic, provide interesting data. Only Arabic allows the MIT-construction in 
sentences like "with him, we have lost a dear friend / great man (etc.)" with the plain 
preposition corresponding to German "mit" (Arabic bi-hi "with him").

Persian requires a contruction like the following:
Baa  dargozasht-e u, 		ma yek dust-e xubi  az    dast  daadim
With passing-away-of him,	we one friend-good from hand gave
"With his passing away, we lost a good friend"

Turkish, instead, requires the following:
Onun 		shahsinde 	iyi 	bir 	arkadash 	kaybettik
He(Genitive)	personality-in	good	one	friend		we lost
"In his personality, we lost a good friend"

For Turkish, the construction using "with his passing away" (ölümüyle) also seems 
possible. It is interesting that the three languages Persian, Arabic and Turkish, that 
have influenced each other quite a lot, diverge on this point. I think there are two 
typologically interesting questions:
- which languages allow the construction with the plain instrumental?
- what kinds of constructions prevail in those languages not allowing it? ("with the 
death of ...", "in/with the personality", etc.)

I think the data above could be an argument to consider the 
German/Icelandic/English (etc.) MIT-construction as elliptic/metaphoric. The 
construction "With him, we lose a good friend" allows two readings in 
German/English and is thus ambiguous:
a. With him (= X), we lose a good friend (= X)
b. With him (= X), we lose a good friend (= Y)

The Turkish and Persian constructions disambiguate this situation by requiring a 
more elaborate construction for a. I think that topicalisation in German, English etc. is 
certainly secondary here (it is not obligatory, anyway), and mainly serves to 
disambiguate the construction (contributing a marked reading to the construction with 
marked position).

Furthermore, I wonder why this construction has not been compared with, as I think, 
similar constructions using "mit", e.g.
Mit ihm geht es aufwärts/abwärts (*it goes up/down with him)
Weg mit ihm! (cf. English "off with his head"?)

I hope that the issue attracts further interest, and that data from typologically diverse 
languages will be provided.

All best,
Ludwig Paul
Hamburg