accusative cursing

[Michael H Covarrubias]

A recent AP story reports that a Northwest airlines flight was canceled because
of a pilot's temper tantrum. In the story we read: "Authorities were told that
the pilot cursed one passenger who confronted him, Gregor said."

Inanimate objects are cursed all the time, but with a human object I would
expect to find "cursed at" or some other syntactical indication of a dative form.

This transitive use of 'cursed' sounds like a case of nefarious magic to me. How
common is this form?

Michael

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   English Language & Linguistics
   Purdue University
   mcovarru at purdue.edu

   web.ics.purdue.edu/~mcovarru
  <http://wishydig.blogspot.com>

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