[Lexicog] meaning and usage of "on me"

Tue Oct 21 21:04:54 UTC 2008

Ken,

German can express this malefactive function by the dative:

ich hoffe, er/sie/es wird uns nicht sterben = I hope he/she/it won’t die on us

komm mir nicht schon wieder damit = literal: don’t come with that again on me

Fritz

Ken, there is no malefactive form in Cheyenne. Some languages have a malefactive; others do not. I suspect that most, if not all, language have a way of communicating malefactive meaning. Some would have to do it with circumlocutions because there is no syntactic or lexical forms dedicated to communicating malefactive meaning.

Wayne

Dear Wayne,

Do you know if there is a "malefactive" in Cheyenne?

Ken

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Sent: Tuesday, October 21, 2008 4:23 AM
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Subject: [Lexicog] meaning and usage of "on me"

? 

FWIW, Kenneth, this usage of "on me" is related to its usages in sentences like:

My car broke down on me.

He gave up on me.

"on me" indicates a negative impact upon someone. It is similar in English to how the Greek dative case can indicate impact of some action on someone.

Wayne Leman

? 

Dear All, 

Just a quick query. Have you thought about the phrase "on me" when preceded by a verb?  Someone recently asked me about the meaning of "on me". He quoted Harry Truman's statement regarding Gen. Douglas MacArthur's insubordination: "I don't want him to resign on me, I want him fired!" What do you think of the phrase "on me"? Is is a transitivizer? What does it mean? This is different than its usual meaning as preposition as in the famous "lean on me". I think it must mean "without my permission", or "against my will".  

Here are some examples I thought of: 

Don't leave on me.

Don't quit on me. 

Don't up and marry on me. 

Don't die on me!

I hope he doesn't...on me. 

I'm afraid he might...on me. 

Can you think of other examples? (Just a hint, using Google wasn't very helpful.)

Is there a text corpus where we can specify "any verb [any tense, any person, any number ]" followed by the phrase "on" followed by an accusative/dative personal pronoun? How long can a phrasal verb incorporating "on me" be?

I am fascinated by this question. I hope you are too. Many thanks in advance, 

Ken

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