Post-predicate Goals in OV languages

[Geoffrey Haig]

Dear Typologists,

The background to my query:

I am working on a group of West Iranian languages spoken in the 
Turkish/Iranian/Iraqi border regions. They are regularly classified as 
OV, but frequently place "Goal" arguments after the predicate. "Goal" is 
used here as a cover term for:

- Goals of verbs of motion
- Recipients of verbs of transfer
- Addressees of verbs of speech

  Text counts in one of the languages reveals between 80-90% of all 
Goals (in the above sense) are post-predicate; this is clearly the 
dominant order. The figure varies according to the areal distribution of 
these languages, and in fact provides an interesting measure of 
areally-determined micro-variation in syntax.

An interesting additional fact is that it is extremely common in these 
languages that the post-predicate Goals lack any overt flagging (while 
the pre-predicate ones require it).

  Unfortunately the typological literature I am aware of gives little 
information on this topic: WALS feature 84A (order of Oblique, Object 
and Verb) does not discuss Recipients, nor does it look at Goals with 
intransitives, while Feature 105A (ditransitives with 'give') does not 
discuss word order.

So here is my question, directed at those who work on OV languages 
outside Iranian, and outside the region concerned:

- can you give me any pointers to literature describing this feature (or 
noting its absence), or indication from your own work on how widespread 
such post-predicate Goals are?

Note: I am solely concerned with full NP Goals, not pronouns (which may 
pattern quite differently).

- If post-predicate Goals are found, are there restrictions on the 
semantic sub-type, or their formal marking? For example, Addressees in 
"my" languages are generally less prone to appear after the predicate 
than local or recipient goals, though this varies across the region.

Many thanks in advance for your help,

cheers

Geoff

-- 
Prof. Geoffrey Haig
Universität Bamberg
Lehrstuhl Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft / General Linguistics
96045 Bamberg
Tel. ++ 49 951 863 2490
Admin: ++ 49 951 863 2491

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