<div dir="ltr"><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:tahoma,sans-serif">dear Matthew,</div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:tahoma,sans-serif"><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:tahoma,sans-serif">I actually see what Daniel meant, and I concur with him. </div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:tahoma,sans-serif"><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:tahoma,sans-serif">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 “<i>a GIVE type verb</i>”.</div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:tahoma,sans-serif"><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:tahoma,sans-serif">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:</div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:tahoma,sans-serif"><ul><li>Boy <take apple> <X girl></li></ul></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:tahoma,sans-serif"><b>Teanu </b>(Oceanic, Solomon Is) has exactly such a construction, which combines the verb <i style="font-weight:bold"><a href="https://marama.huma-num.fr/Lex/Teanu/l.htm#%E2%93%94~la%E2%93%971">la</a></i> (take) with a second verb <b><i><a href="https://marama.huma-num.fr/Lex/Teanu/m.htm#%E2%93%94~mini">mini</a></i></b> :</div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:tahoma,sans-serif"><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style=""><span style="font-family:tahoma,sans-serif">1) </span><font face="verdana, sans-serif"> Ni-<b>la</b> okoro ni-<b>mini</b> tili' one.</font></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:tahoma,sans-serif"><font size="1"> 1s-take knife 1s-XXX brother my</font></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:tahoma,sans-serif"> “I gave the knife to my brother.”</div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:tahoma,sans-serif"><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:tahoma,sans-serif">The first verb encodes the binary relation between the agent and the theme, hence a possible translation <Agt TAKE Theme>. (and its <a href="https://dictionaria.clld.org/units/teanu-LX000194">other meanings</a> confirm that "take" would be a correct gloss.)</div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:tahoma,sans-serif"><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:tahoma,sans-serif">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, <i style="font-weight:bold">mini</i> evidently has a more abstract/ more general meaning, which could be glossed “X serve Y”, “X do-smtg-for Y”.</div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:tahoma,sans-serif"><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:tahoma,sans-serif"><div class="gmail_default">2) <font face="verdana, sans-serif"> U-ko ruene u-<b>mini</b> ini.</font></div><div class="gmail_default"><font size="1"> 2s:Irr-open door 2s:Irr-serve 3sg</font></div><div class="gmail_default"> “Open the door for her.”</div><div class="gmail_default"><br></div><div class="gmail_default"><div class="gmail_default">3) <font face="verdana, sans-serif"> Li-langatene li-<b>mini</b> dapa damala.</font></div><div class="gmail_default"><font size="1"> 3p:Rea-work 3p:Rea-serve PL Westerners</font></div><div class="gmail_default"> “They worked for (the benefit of) Westerners.”</div><div class="gmail_default"><br></div><div class="gmail_default">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 <a href="https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E7%B5%A6#Definitions">Mandarin 给 gěi</a>. This may be justified in some languages; however, in the case of Teanu at least, there is no evidence that <i>mini</i> ever meant “give” on its own.</div><div class="gmail_default"><br></div><div class="gmail_default">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.</div><div class="gmail_default">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.</div></div></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:tahoma,sans-serif"><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:tahoma,sans-serif">best</div><div><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_signature" data-smartmail="gmail_signature"><div dir="ltr"><span style="font-family:tahoma,sans-serif"><font size="2">Alex</font></span><hr style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:tahoma,sans-serif;font-size:13.33px;font-style:normal;font-weight:400;letter-spacing:normal;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;word-spacing:0px" width="70" size="1" noshade align="left"><p style="font-family:verdana,geneva,sans-serif"><font size="2"><span style="color:rgb(69,129,142)">Alex François</span><span style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif"><br></span></font></p><span style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif"><font size="1"><span style="text-decoration:none"><a style="text-decoration:none" href="http://www.lattice.cnrs.fr/en/alexandre-francois/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">LaTTiCe</a> — <a title="ENS" style="color:rgb(51,102,204);text-decoration:none" href="http://www.cnrs.fr/index.html" rel="noopener" target="_blank">CNRS–</a><a title="ENS" style="color:rgb(51,102,204);text-decoration:none" href="https://www.ens.fr/laboratoire/lattice-langues-textes-traitements-informatiques-et-cognition-umr-8094" rel="noopener" target="_blank">ENS</a>–<a title="ENS" style="color:rgb(51,102,204);text-decoration:none" href="http://www.univ-paris3.fr/lattice-langues-textes-traitements-informatiques-cognition-umr-8094-3458.kjsp" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Sorbonne nouvelle</a><br></span><a style="color:rgb(51,102,204);text-decoration:none" href="https://researchers.anu.edu.au/researchers/francois-a" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Australian National University</a></font><font size="1"><span style="text-decoration:none"><font size="1"><span style="text-decoration:none"><br></span></font></span></font></span><div><span style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif"><font size="1"><span style="text-decoration:none"><font size="1"><span style="text-decoration:none"> </span><span style="text-decoration:none"></span></font></span><span style="text-decoration:none"><a style="color:rgb(51,102,204);text-decoration:none" href="http://alex.francois.online.fr/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Personal homepage</a><br></span></font></span></div><div><font size="1">___________________</font><font size="1">___________________</font><font size="1">___</font><br><span style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif"><font size="1"><span style="text-decoration:none"></span></font></span></div></div></div></div><br></div><br><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Thu, 27 Jan 2022 at 17:16, Russell Barlow <<a href="mailto:russell_barlow@eva.mpg.de">russell_barlow@eva.mpg.de</a>> wrote:<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><u></u>
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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:
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"boy take apple, give girl"
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... 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:
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verb1 apple, verb2 girl
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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:
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boy verb1 apple, girl verb2 apple
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... something like "the boy proffered the apple; the girl took the apple".
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Best,
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Russell
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<p>Russell Barlow<br>Postdoctoral Researcher<br>Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology<br>Department of Linguistic and Cultural Evolution<br><a href="mailto:russell_barlow@eva.mpg.de" target="_blank">russell_barlow@eva.mpg.de</a></p>
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On 01/27/2022 4:41 PM Daniel Ross <<a href="mailto:djross3@gmail.com" target="_blank">djross3@gmail.com</a>> wrote:
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Matthew,
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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 <em>give</em>. 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).
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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'.
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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.
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Daniel
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On Thu, Jan 27, 2022 at 7:03 AM Matthew Dryer <<a href="mailto:dryer@buffalo.edu" target="_blank">dryer@buffalo.edu</a>> wrote:
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<p class="MsoNormal">Daniel,<u></u><u></u></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal">This does not seem to be what my colleague is looking for since the second verb still arguably means ‘give’.<u></u><u></u></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal">Matthew<u></u><u></u></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><strong><span style="font-size:12pt;color:black">From: </span></strong><span style="font-size:12pt;color:black">Daniel Ross <<a href="mailto:djross3@gmail.com" rel="noopener" target="_blank">djross3@gmail.com</a>><br><strong>Date: </strong>Wednesday, January 26, 2022 at 11:27 PM<br><strong>To: </strong>Matthew Dryer <<a href="mailto:dryer@buffalo.edu" rel="noopener" target="_blank">dryer@buffalo.edu</a>><br><strong>Cc: </strong>"<a href="mailto:lingtyp@listserv.linguistlist.org" rel="noopener" target="_blank">lingtyp@listserv.linguistlist.org</a>" <<a href="mailto:lingtyp@listserv.linguistlist.org" rel="noopener" target="_blank">lingtyp@listserv.linguistlist.org</a>><br><strong>Subject: </strong>Re: [Lingtyp] languages lacking a verb for 'give'<u></u><u></u></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal">Dear Matthew,<u></u><u></u></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal">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.)<u></u><u></u></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal">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:<u></u><u></u></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal">ɔde sekaŋ no mãã me<br>he-take knife the give-PAST me<br>'S/he gave me the knife' [originally from Christaller 1875: 118]<u></u><u></u></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal">Sebba, Mark. 1987. The syntax of serial verbs: an investigation into serialisation in Sranan and other languages. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. <a href="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" rel="noopener" target="_blank"> https://doi.org/10.1075/cll.2</a><u></u><u></u></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal">(Tangential note: SVCs like this are generally considered <em> monoclausal</em>, 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: <a href="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" rel="noopener" target="_blank"> https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5546425</a> -- but I don't discuss this specific question about 'give'.)<u></u><u></u></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal">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:<u></u><u></u></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><a href="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" rel="noopener" target="_blank">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</a><u></u><u></u></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal">Daniel<u></u><u></u></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal">On Wed, Jan 26, 2022 at 7:43 PM Matthew Dryer <<a href="mailto:dryer@buffalo.edu" rel="noopener" target="_blank">dryer@buffalo.edu</a>> wrote:<u></u><u></u></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><a name="m_4288436376423377673_m_-6529256804020571052_m_9006019862080693940__GoBack"></a>I am sending this query on behalf of a colleague.<u></u><u></u></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal">He wants to know <span style="color:black">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?</span><u></u><u></u></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal">Matthew Dryer<u></u><u></u></p>
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