[Lingtyp] languages lacking a verb for 'give'
Alex Francois
alex.francois.cnrs at gmail.com
Thu Jan 27 17:19:32 UTC 2022
dear Matthew,
I actually see what Daniel meant, and I concur with him.
Many languages have a verb GIVE which is a 3-place predicate: it
subcategorizes for an Agent, a Theme and a Recipient. This is how I
understand your initial query, when you mention “*a GIVE type verb*”.
Now in other languages (as discussed by Daniel and Russell), the
semantically equivalent construction takes the form of a serial verb
involving two 2-place predicates:
- Boy <take apple> <X girl>
*Teanu *(Oceanic, Solomon Is) has exactly such a construction, which
combines the verb *la
<https://marama.huma-num.fr/Lex/Teanu/l.htm#%E2%93%94~la%E2%93%971>* (take)
with a second verb *mini
<https://marama.huma-num.fr/Lex/Teanu/m.htm#%E2%93%94~mini>* :
1) Ni-*la* okoro ni-*mini* tili' one.
1s-take knife 1s-XXX brother my
“I gave the knife to my brother.”
The first verb encodes the binary relation between the agent and the theme,
hence a possible translation <Agt TAKE Theme>. (and its other meanings
<https://dictionaria.clld.org/units/teanu-LX000194> confirm that "take"
would be a correct gloss.)
As for the second verb, it encodes a binary relation between the agent and
the recipient. A quick translation could be GIVE as a rough approximation,
but if we want to be accurate, its meaning is actually different. In the
case of Teanu at least, *mini* evidently has a more abstract/ more general
meaning, which could be glossed “X serve Y”, “X do-smtg-for Y”.
2) U-ko ruene u-*mini* ini.
2s:Irr-open door 2s:Irr-serve 3sg
“Open the door for her.”
3) Li-langatene li-*mini* dapa damala.
3p:Rea-work 3p:Rea-serve PL Westerners
“They worked for (the benefit of) Westerners.”
For similar examples in some languages, the usual analysis is to consider
that the language has a verb GIVE, which occasionally gets extended
semantically to more abstract meanings: see for example how a dictionary
entry is typically presented for Mandarin 给 gěi
<https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E7%B5%A6#Definitions>. This may be
justified in some languages; however, in the case of Teanu at least, there
is no evidence that *mini* ever meant “give” on its own.
Hence, I would propose that Teanu qualifies as “a language that lacks a
GIVE type verb” (as per your original query): it only has this meaning
when following the verb TAKE.
It is possible that the languages mentioned earlier by Daniel are amenable
to a similar analysis, and are thus compatible with the initial query after
all.
best
Alex
------------------------------
Alex François
LaTTiCe <http://www.lattice.cnrs.fr/en/alexandre-francois/> — CNRS–
<http://www.cnrs.fr/index.html>ENS
<https://www.ens.fr/laboratoire/lattice-langues-textes-traitements-informatiques-et-cognition-umr-8094>
–Sorbonne nouvelle
<http://www.univ-paris3.fr/lattice-langues-textes-traitements-informatiques-cognition-umr-8094-3458.kjsp>
Australian National University
<https://researchers.anu.edu.au/researchers/francois-a>
Personal homepage <http://alex.francois.online.fr/>
_________________________________________
On Thu, 27 Jan 2022 at 17:16, Russell Barlow <russell_barlow at eva.mpg.de>
wrote:
> Daniel,
>
> I'm not sure I follow. Presumably we'd be relying on the translations of
> the *arguments*, not of the verbs, when figuring out the semantic roles of
> each verbal object. So, in examples of the sort that you, Eline, and I
> (maybe others) have provided, we see something like:
>
> "boy take apple, give girl"
>
> ... to mean something like "the boy gives the girl an apple". I share your
> unease about considering the second verb in such cases to be "give" in the
> English sense. But I don't think there's any issue in figuring out which NP
> is semantically the theme and which NP is semantically the recipient. We
> could ignore the glosses of the verbs, and the semantic roles of the
> participants would still be clear:
>
> verb1 apple, verb2 girl
>
> Provided we know that "apple" and "girl" are both the objects of the verbs
> they follow, then we could say that the object of verb1 is a Theme, and the
> object of verb2 is a Recipient. I think what Matthew and I are both
> interested in finding is something like:
>
> boy verb1 apple, girl verb2 apple
>
> ... something like "the boy proffered the apple; the girl took the apple".
>
> Best,
> Russell
>
> Russell Barlow
> Postdoctoral Researcher
> Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology
> Department of Linguistic and Cultural Evolution
> russell_barlow at eva.mpg.de
>
> On 01/27/2022 4:41 PM Daniel Ross <djross3 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> Matthew,
>
> Relying on translation equivalents in this case is not clear. If the verb
> "give" exclusively appears in SVCs (as is claimed for some languages), then
> it's only half of the lexical meaning of English *give*. We could
> translate it as something else, e.g. some active equivalent of 'receive'
> (several verbs like 'supply (the army)' or 'load (the truck)' can be used
> in this way, although they're flexible including ditransitive usage like
> 'give' at least with prepositional arguments).
>
> Russell, I have the same uncertainty about your question: how do we know
> what a "Theme" argument is, without relying on translation? In many
> languages with SVCs of this type, there is no case marking (in fact, SVCs
> are said by some to function as case markers), so I don't know what other
> evidence there would be aside from the translation of the verb itself,
> which only in the construction as a whole means 'give'.
>
> I assume that the etymology of the verbs in these constructions is not
> 'give': that is, it's not the case that an original, full lexical verb
> 'give' taking three arguments was reduced to taking two arguments and
> expanded into this construction, but that some other verb grammaticalized
> into that function. There's been a lot written about these kinds of usage,
> but I'm not sure about the best sources to recommend for that specific
> etymological question. I do think it would be relevant to the original
> question, though.
>
> Daniel
>
>
> On Thu, Jan 27, 2022 at 7:03 AM Matthew Dryer <dryer at buffalo.edu> wrote:
>
> Daniel,
>
>
>
> This does not seem to be what my colleague is looking for since the second
> verb still arguably means ‘give’.
>
>
>
> Matthew
>
>
>
> *From: *Daniel Ross <djross3 at gmail.com>
> *Date: *Wednesday, January 26, 2022 at 11:27 PM
> *To: *Matthew Dryer <dryer at buffalo.edu>
> *Cc: *"lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org" <
> lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org>
> *Subject: *Re: [Lingtyp] languages lacking a verb for 'give'
>
>
>
> Dear Matthew,
>
>
>
> This is a common pattern for languages with serial verb constructions,
> along the lines of "take book give him", etc. There has been a lot written
> about the lack of argument structure in these languages (some claiming that
> three arguments are not possible in some languages), and that SVCs can
> supplement that argument structure (and possibly a small inventory of
> verbs, according to some sources). I'm not as confident in some of the more
> extreme claims about this, but it is clear that this pattern is widespread
> among many of these languages (I know I've seen explicit claims for West
> Africa and creoles, and probably elsewhere). At the same time, it is not
> clear that these languages, strictly speaking, lack a lexical verb "give",
> since one of the verbs in this construction can be translated as such,
> although it is used with another verb (often 'take') to supplement it for
> the full argument structure. Other patterns are found too, and probably
> various other lexical verbs are used in a function like 'give', so it
> becomes a question of lexical translation. (This more generally is related
> to patterns of verbs in SVCs developing into prepositions.)
>
>
>
> I'm sorry I don't immediately have any specific languages/references in
> mind, but let me know if you'd like me to try to find some. I know that
> Sebba 1987 discusses this in some detail, and here's one example:
>
>
>
> ɔde sekaŋ no mãã me
> he-take knife the give-PAST me
> 'S/he gave me the knife' [originally from Christaller 1875: 118]
>
>
>
> Sebba, Mark. 1987. The syntax of serial verbs: an investigation into
> serialisation in Sranan and other languages. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
> https://doi.org/10.1075/cll.2
> <https://nam12.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fdoi.org%2F10.1075%2Fcll.2&data=04%7C01%7Cdryer%40buffalo.edu%7Cc44862af146441dbdbf808d9e14d210e%7C96464a8af8ed40b199e25f6b50a20250%7C0%7C0%7C637788544416223276%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000&sdata=SHIWY7LV%2B4KJ5mQ9%2FaNUhpSLtDvNn2s3udyusfGdNE0%3D&reserved=0>
>
>
>
> (Tangential note: SVCs like this are generally considered * monoclausal*,
> by a variety of metrics, so I wouldn't call this "two analytic clauses",
> although the effect is the same. My dissertation thoroughly reviews the
> issue of monoclausality: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5546425
> <https://nam12.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fdoi.org%2F10.5281%2Fzenodo.5546425&data=04%7C01%7Cdryer%40buffalo.edu%7Cc44862af146441dbdbf808d9e14d210e%7C96464a8af8ed40b199e25f6b50a20250%7C0%7C0%7C637788544416223276%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000&sdata=SO5DRkCQvGojEx0eGLfyTDzhiZDKioxLvXqGU8bmwoE%3D&reserved=0>
> -- but I don't discuss this specific question about 'give'.)
>
>
>
> Finally, one extra comment, which is probably not what your colleague is
> after, is that there are some languages where the lexical verb 'give' is
> (at least in some cases) a zero root or null morpheme, i.e. indicated by
> lack of phonological content plus other inflectional morphology. This is
> discussed for some PNG languages here:
>
>
> https://www.academia.edu/40037774/Comrie_B_and_R_Zamponi_2019_Verb_root_ellipsis_In_Morphological_perspectives_papers_in_honour_of_Greville_G_Corbett_ed_by_M_Baerman_O_Bond_and_A_Hippisley_Edinburgh_Edinburgh_University_Press_pp_233_280
> <https://nam12.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.academia.edu%2F40037774%2FComrie_B_and_R_Zamponi_2019_Verb_root_ellipsis_In_Morphological_perspectives_papers_in_honour_of_Greville_G_Corbett_ed_by_M_Baerman_O_Bond_and_A_Hippisley_Edinburgh_Edinburgh_University_Press_pp_233_280&data=04%7C01%7Cdryer%40buffalo.edu%7Cc44862af146441dbdbf808d9e14d210e%7C96464a8af8ed40b199e25f6b50a20250%7C0%7C0%7C637788544416223276%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000&sdata=ONKTzIsx0gdsULoAdNVs81gRBFDA78i60cX2OLeHQJc%3D&reserved=0>
>
>
>
> Daniel
>
>
>
> On Wed, Jan 26, 2022 at 7:43 PM Matthew Dryer <dryer at buffalo.edu> wrote:
>
> I am sending this query on behalf of a colleague.
>
>
>
> He wants to know whether anyone knows of a language that lacks a "give"
> type verb and would express something like "I gave him the book" instead as
> something like "I presented the book (to him) and he took it". That is, is
> there a language that can only express a give-type concept with two more
> analytic clauses?
>
>
>
> Matthew Dryer
>
>
>
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