[Lingtyp] languages lacking a verb for 'give'

[Russell Barlow]

Dear Matthew, all,

I describe 'give' events in Ulwa (Papua New Guinea) a bit (Barlow 2018: 285-289). They are encoded with two verbs, one meaning 'take', the other meaning, well, 'give' (?) (I can't say 'present', as in your example "I presented the book (to him) and he took it", since the object of the second verb is a Recipient, not a Theme). I think 'give' constructions as are found in Ulwa occur fairly commonly in Papuan languages, although, as Daniel points out, they're hard to spot, since almost invariably the grammar writer glosses one of the verbs as 'give'.

So Ulwa, like Akan (?) in Daniel's example, uses two verbs for 'give' events. Also as in that example, the object of one verb is a Theme, while the object of the other verb is a Recipient. If your colleague is specifically looking for constructions where *both* verbs take (only) a Theme argument, then I don't know of any such languages offhand. I, too, would be very interested in seeing some examples of that!

Best,
Russell

Barlow, Russell. 2018. A grammar of Ulwa. (Doctoral dissertation, University of Hawai'i at Mānoa; xiv+546pp.)


Russell Barlow
Postdoctoral Researcher
Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology
Department of Linguistic and Cultural Evolution
russell_barlow at eva.mpg.de

> On 01/27/2022 5:25 AM Daniel Ross <djross3 at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> 
> Dear Matthew,
> 
> This is a common pattern for languages with serial verb constructions, along the lines of "take book give him", etc. There has been a lot written about the lack of argument structure in these languages (some claiming that three arguments are not possible in some languages), and that SVCs can supplement that argument structure (and possibly a small inventory of verbs, according to some sources). I'm not as confident in some of the more extreme claims about this, but it is clear that this pattern is widespread among many of these languages (I know I've seen explicit claims for West Africa and creoles, and probably elsewhere). At the same time, it is not clear that these languages, strictly speaking, lack a lexical verb "give", since one of the verbs in this construction can be translated as such, although it is used with another verb (often 'take') to supplement it for the full argument structure. Other patterns are found too, and probably various other lexical verbs are used in a function like 'give', so it becomes a question of lexical translation. (This more generally is related to patterns of verbs in SVCs developing into prepositions.)
> 
> I'm sorry I don't immediately have any specific languages/references in mind, but let me know if you'd like me to try to find some. I know that Sebba 1987 discusses this in some detail, and here's one example:
> 
> ɔde sekaŋ no mãã me
> he-take knife the give-PAST me
> 'S/he gave me the knife' [originally from Christaller 1875: 118]
> 
> Sebba, Mark. 1987. The syntax of serial verbs: an investigation into serialisation in Sranan and other languages. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. https://doi.org/10.1075/cll.2
> 
> (Tangential note: SVCs like this are generally considered monoclausal, by a variety of metrics, so I wouldn't call this "two analytic clauses", although the effect is the same. My dissertation thoroughly reviews the issue of monoclausality: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5546425 -- but I don't discuss this specific question about 'give'.)
> 
> Finally, one extra comment, which is probably not what your colleague is after, is that there are some languages where the lexical verb 'give' is (at least in some cases) a zero root or null morpheme, i.e. indicated by lack of phonological content plus other inflectional morphology. This is discussed for some PNG languages here:
> https://www.academia.edu/40037774/Comrie_B_and_R_Zamponi_2019_Verb_root_ellipsis_In_Morphological_perspectives_papers_in_honour_of_Greville_G_Corbett_ed_by_M_Baerman_O_Bond_and_A_Hippisley_Edinburgh_Edinburgh_University_Press_pp_233_280
> 
> Daniel
> 
> On Wed, Jan 26, 2022 at 7:43 PM Matthew Dryer <dryer at buffalo.edu mailto:dryer at buffalo.edu > wrote:
> 
> > 
> > I am sending this query on behalf of a colleague.
> > 
> >  
> > 
> > He wants to know whether anyone knows of a language that lacks a "give" type verb and would express something like "I gave him the book" instead as something like "I presented the book (to him) and he took it". That is, is there a language that can only express a give-type concept with two more analytic clauses?
> > 
> >  
> > 
> > Matthew Dryer
> > 
> >  
> > 
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