"adverbials" with accusative case

[Hans-Juergen Sasse]

> > Also, on the topic of adverbials, I know that Hungarian is one example of
> > a language that actually can assign accusative case to a seeming
> > adverbial, barring the existence an object NP, for example the following
> > gloss could occur in Hungarian.
> >
> > John worked two hours-ACC
>

Albanian and Modern Greek time adverbials behave in the same way. Cf. Greek dhio
ores 'for two hours', oli tin imera 'all day long', to ximona 'in the winter',
tin alli mera 'on the next day', etc. etc.I would be reluctant to analyze these
as objects, since they can occur with transitive verbs in addition to their
overt objects.
What about German
Wir warten schon drei Stunden 'We have already been waiting for three hours'?

Hans-Juergen Sasse