I'm told

Tue Aug 18 13:52:05 UTC 1998

----------------------------Original message----------------------------

Concerning my latest, comments, Benji Wald remarks:

 The only disappointment I had is
>that she did not respond to my interest in the historical status of the XY
>= Y FOR X construction, as in "cook me it" = "cook it for me".  I mentioned
>that I thought I had noted ME examples of the type "cook it me", but I
>hadn't studied the problem closely enough to determine whether this remnant
>of historical X-DAT Y-ACC case-marking and word order has become (or always
>was) distinct from the type which has become "XY = Y TO X", e.g., "give me
>it = give it to me".  As far as I understand the literature, this is not an
>issue.  It is not singled out one way or another.  So, I would assume that
>analysts don't feel there is a basis to make a distinction between "X TO Y"
>and "X FOR Y" in relation to "XY".  But I would not take it for granted.
>So I'm looking for explicit (dis)confirmation of that assumption.  The
>difference could be in the relation of the two prepositions to thematic
>role (or whatever you want to call it) and/or in the degree of independence
>of that role from any particular lexical verb.  That remains a concern for
>me, because of the level of comparison I want to make for syntactic
>constructions associated with ACC case-marking in Eurafrasian languages.
>The issue involves ACC and inevitably the ACC/NOM! relationship (and thus,
>for the moment, excludes the ergative case-marking languages that confront
>Eurafrasia).  The objective is to explore whether the development of the ME
>indirect passive was indeed more likely than not under the circumstances
>(hence, what ARE the circumstances? cf. Semitic also develops NOM-marked
>indirect passivisation), or whether the linguistic (as opposed to, say,
>social) conditions were ever sufficient to favor this direction of change
>over others.

I'm afraid that I just don't have any useful information to impart about
this sort of benefactive.  In my study, I was concentrating on the new
passives, and whether the traditional 'reanalysis' view was supported by
the facts.  I was focusing on examples with a recipient.  I agree that
separating the different semantic types would be worthwhile.

>
>>2. The first few true examples of 'he was given a book' are found later on
>>in the 14thC.
>
>This shows an increasing association of NOM with "subject" -- in the case
>of pronouns.
 It isprobably difficult to securely establish a priority
>between this change and a shift of agreement for the passivised verb when
>the subject is a lexical NP and thus indistinguishable for "oblique" and
>NOM.  The issue is where "the boys was given a book" > "the boys WERE given
>a book" fits in to "them was given a book" > "they were given a book".  I
>think NOM presupposes verb agreement, but unmarked preverbal NPs do not.
>(I could anticipate attestation of "them were given books", but not "they
>was..." in the relevant period.)

It sounds from these comments as though Benji has accepted the tradional
view that the new passives were caused by a reanalysis of a fronted dative
as nominative-or at least that the dative was still fronted when change to
nominative took place.  I have tried to explain why I don't think that is
the case.  As far as I can see, there is absolutely no difficulty sorting
out the timing of verbal agreement.  I can only refer interested parties to
chapter 9 of my book again.

In response to my comment:
>>...the reality seems to
>>be that the Experiencer of *please* was always unambiguously the object
>>except in this construction, where it starts showing up as a nominative
>>subject in the early 16thC.  ...No ambiguity-driven syntactic reanalysis
>>can have been
>>involved for two reasons (1) the 'reanalysis' takes place much too late and
>>(2) there was no model for a syntactic reanalysis; i.e. sentences like 'the
>>king will do as the king pleases' are not found until 'the king will do as
>>he pleases' are also found; before this, 'the king will do as it pleases
>>the king (or him)' is the only possibility.
>
>There's a misunderstanding here.  The reanalysis is not too late, given
>that we are dealing with lexical diffusion of DAT > SUBJ for experiencers,
>and the OED (Onions, I guess) notes the innovation in "please" as
>corresponding to "like".  It cites 1500 Dunbar (Northern) "your melody he
>pleases [= likes] not til hear" (in modern spelling).  The equivalent use
>of "like" (current use) is cited as early as 1200, but the archaic
>"inverted" use (from DAT of experiencer) continues as late as 1616 in Ben
>Johnson: "if this play does not LIKE [= please], the Devil's in it" and
>even *1784* in Cowper: "they...howl and war as LIKES [= pleases] them".
>
There's no misunderstanding on my part, as far as I can see.  The
'reanalysis' is certainly too late to be lumped in with the cases where a
preposed dative starts showing up as a nominative.  My basic point was that
this could not have been an ambiguity-driven reanalysis.

As for what the OED says-it is true that I oversimplified matters by not
mentioning the brief life of nominative experiencers with 'please' followed
by an infinitive, but anyone looking at the sources that I referred Benji
to will know that I discuss these.  I also discuss why the OED is simply
wrong about 'please'.  The OED is a wonderful tool, but a necessary
limitations of dictionaries, however good, is that they cannot give a
really systematic account of the history of any lexeme because they cannot
show how the lexeme is embedded in the grammatical system of the time.  The
OED is a terrific place to start a historical investigation in English, but
a bad place to stop.  I hope Benji will look at the evidence which I have
presented concerning this matter.

Concerning my comments on non-nominative subjects, Benji says:
>
>I agree that this is a useful analysis.  It shows the separation of
>"subject" from NOM as a case marker.  I believe a similar analysis is
>sometimes proposed for German, where a dummy subject 'es' (3s neuter) is
>required for impersonal passives like "es wird gevochten"  (it fight-PASS)
>"there's fighting going on" (more lit. "there's being fought") vs.
>"indirect" passives like ihm wird geholfen (him-DAT help-PASS) "he's being
>helped", where the need for a dummy SUBJECT is obviated by the preposed DAT
>filling the SUBJECT position.  This suggests that "subject" analysis of
>preposed DAT in OE, as with verbs like 'deman', could have preceded the
>shift to NOM marking.  (Of course, English did not develop the impersonal
>passive in the same way as German, and the emergent construction "there's
>[[fight]V-ing]N..." is involved with the distinctive and striking
>grammatical development of the English gerund.)

I am pleased that Benji and I agree in believing that case marking and
grammatical relations must be kept separate.  But I have to correct the
comment about 'deem'.  There has been no shift DAT>NOM here, because the
'deemer' (judger) was always nominative in OE.  The judged thing, not the
experiencer, was dative.

Benji ends with:
>I am less defensive about running on, but I think that there is nothing for
>you to apologise for here.  You are informing readers who are interested
>but not familiar with the facts and your views.  It is appropriate to use
>HIST.LING in this way, just as the question about "I'm told" encourages.
>Thanks for your replies.

I'm happy that Benji has found the discussion useful, and I hope that
others have too.  But I think that we have different views of what a list
like this is for.  It is great for raising questions such as the one which
sparked this discussion and for finding out where to go to read what has
been published on the subject, or for getting information that is not in
print.  But I think that once someone has been directed to literature on a
topic (such as the history of please) they ought to read it so they have
all the evidence at their before making further comments on the subject.
I'm afraid I just don't have time to rewrite my book and my articles on
this list, and I feel like that's what I've been doing.  If someone reads
my arguments and wants to say why they don't find them convincing, that's a
different matter and I'll be glad to respond.

Cynthia

Cynthia Allen
Linguistics, Arts Faculty
Australian National University
Canberra, ACT 0200
Australia