dative uses (was Re: Prescriptive Linguists)

[Mark Mandel]

But that holds only for the lyrics as I learned them. The Carter lyrics --
possibly to a different tune, folk songs are constantly passing bits of
verse, lines, and whole stanzas around ("I Got It From Agnes"?!) -- clearly
involve the singer, the singee, and the unmentioned quasi-pawnbroker.
Quoting again from Charlie's post:

   Oh I'll pawn you my gold watch and chain, love,
   And I'll pawn you my gold diamond ring,
   I will pawn you this heart in my bosom,
   Only say that you'll love me again.

And that's a case of the INTERESTING setup.

m a m

On Jan 31, 2008 1:41 PM, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu> wrote:

> At 1:20 PM -0500 1/31/08, Mark Mandel wrote:
> >On Jan 31, 2008 10:52 AM, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu> wrote:
> >
> >>  Of course what makes it tricky is that the dative here is not the
> >>  recipient but the benefactive, but that's also true of "build" and
> >>  "buy", among other verbs.  What makes the "Mary" example ("Which car
> >>  did you put Mary in the garage?") so much more out there (but not, I
> >>  would submit, gibberish to those speakers on the right side of the
> >>  relevant isogloss) is that "Mary" is neither an argument of the verb
> >>  (unlike the "you" of the *pawn* example) nor a subject-indexing
> >>  pronoun (unlike the "him" of the Jack Daniels example).  It's much
> >>  closer to the "ethical dative" that we get in German, French, Hebrew,
> >>  and many other languages.
> >
> >
> >I would distinguish "build" and "buy" from "pawn". The first two don't
> >(can't?) have dative arguments distinct from benefactives, while "pawn"
> can.
> >
> >
> >The song as I learned it has "If my woman says no, I won't railroad no
> more
> >/ Sidetrack that main line and go home", not "If you say so..." as in the
> >text I quoted from Mudcat/DigiTrad, and there's no context that indicates
> >that the addressee is anyone in particular. So in the relevant lines --
> >>I will pawn you my watch, I will pawn you my chain
> >>Pawn you my gold diamond ring.
> >-- I interpreted "you" as a dative -- addressed (apostrophized) to a
> >pawnbroker, or to another listener with about the same meaning minus the
> >pawnbroker's license and shop. That's not a "tricky example" in the way
> you
> >describe, which does apply for Woody's words and the Mary example.
>
> Well, if (as Tom Z and you agree[!]) the singee of the Carter song is
> indeed the (real or virtual) pawnbroker/recipient of the hypothecated
> goodies rather than the benefactive, then this construction does
> completely reduce to ordinary dative-shift, as with "give" or "sell".
> I always heard it as involving the singer, the singee, and an
> unmentioned third party serving as pawnbroker.  Your version involves
> a bit of a metaphorical stretch, but not a linguistic one, and that
> certainly takes all the trickiness out of the construction.  I was
> thinking that the awkwardness of "She was pawned a gold watch" might
> argue for the for-dative ("She was built a house" or "She was bought
> a Cadillac" are similarly awkward for me, although perhaps less so)
> rather than the to-dative ("She was given/sold a gold watch and
> chain"), but who really knows.
>
> >(And for
> >me, the original Mary example was also further obscured by the
> Wh-movement.)
> >
> Agreed.
>
> LH
>
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>



--
Mark Mandel

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